Wicked Blood
by Elphaba and Her Boyfriends
Summary: Hogwarts is hosting the Triwizard Tournament, and Ancient Runes professor Clio Callimachus could care less. She's too preoccupied with tracking down Remus Lupin, unraveling the mystery of her grandfather's murder, and finding just the right moment to let slip the dirt she dug up on Severus Snape over the summer. Sequel to "Another One Goes By."
1. Fourteen Blocks

The Man in Black checked that his door was securely locked behind him, then tread rapidly down the cobblestone street. He hunched his shoulders beneath his cloak, as if against a cold wind. The gangly-limbed boy who watched him intently from the front walk three houses down wore short sleeves, and sweated in the pre-dusk heat of August.

Roland had watched him come and go periodically throughout the summer, and always the Man in Black wore the same black cloak. Hence the nickname. As if he could feel eyes tracking him from behind, the man stopped and turned abruptly, piercing the boy with one dark eye. Roland could distinguish neither iris nor pupil, just a glint of reflected light bouncing out from the shadows gathered beneath his disapproving brow. The eye flicked left and right, as if unsatisfied by what it saw. Perhaps the man sensed that someone else was spying, someone hidden.

Roland looked down abruptly, pretending that he had been focused on his bicycle (flipped upside-down) the entire time. The man continued walking, cloak billowing behind him as he turned and strode purposefully down another cobbled lane toward the river, where the boy sometimes poked a stick into the muddy shallows, hoping to see a fish or turtle. His mother had told him more than once that nothing lived in that stinking water, and he was under no circumstances allowed to wade into it. He had once, on one sweltering July day, and been so disgusted by the slimy ooze creeping between his toes that he hadn't attempted it again.

The man disappeared into the monotonous rows of tumbledown brick house, and the boy dared look up again, simultaneously attempting to rub the thick black grease from the bicycle chain off his fingers and onto his legs, without success. Underneath the grease, many of the chain links were rusted. His bicycle was a patchwork of mismatched parts scavenged from other bicycles, and he spent almost as much time repairing it as riding it. It was apparently time to find a new chain.

"Here, let me take a look at that," said the woman, who had appeared again just as quickly as she'd disappeared a few minutes ago. "I used to bike everywhere, and my chain would lock up and pop off like that occasionally."

Her accent was strange, but her voice itself was comforting, and he stepped away from the bicycle as she knelt before it, cutoff jeans riding up her bronzed thighs. His light blue eyes jumped away to her arms as she rolled up her plaid sleeves, stopping at the elbows despite the heat. He heard her muttering to herself under her breath, and saw a flash of movement. Her hands seemed to flutter about the bicycle without actually touching it. He must have looked away without realizing it, because suddenly the chain was back on and running smoothly along the chain wheel as she cranked the pedals.

"Here you go, all fixed," she said, flipping the bike over and holding it out to him by the handlebars. He took it by the seat and turned the pedals himself to confirm that, yes, the chain was unkinked. The bent teeth on the chain wheel were also straight, now.

"Thank you, miss," he whispered, glancing anxiously at his own house, though he knew his mother wasn't home from work yet and couldn't yell at him for allowing a stranger to fix his bike if she wasn't around to see it.

"That man in the house at the end of street," she said, tilting her head toward the Man in Black's house. "How often does he come and go?"

"Every now and then. I see him once maybe every other week," he answered, intrigued that someone else found the Man in Black as fascinating as he did.

She looked thoughtfully into the direction he'd gone. "So he won't be back anytime soon? He won't come back this evening, for instance?"

"I don't think so. He doesn't come and go often."

She nodded. "Thanks," she said. "Do me a favor. If he ever asks, I was never here."

"He won't. He never says anything. I tried saying hello once and he scowled and said, (and here he lowered his voice in imitation of the Man in Black, though he couldn't get quite deep enough) "Didn't your mother teach you not to converse with strangers?"

The woman didn't smile, she didn't seem capable of it, but for a moment he saw a flash of life in her dull brown eyes. "Still, just in case," she said. She turned to go, then turned back for a moment.

"You know, if you don't talk to strangers, you won't get to know anyone," she said. She turned once again and took a few steps down the walk before stopping a second time. "Just be careful about the ones you choose to talk to."

Roland watched her retreating figure for a moment, then jumped onto his bike and began pedaling down the street, tires thumping over the uneven stones as he flew all the way to the corner before turning back and circling around.

"A witch used to live in that house," he boasted.

"A witch?" she asked, clearly not believing him. "Did you ever see her?"

"Yes, she'd come out and yell at anyone who walked across her back garden."

"So you crossed it a lot then, I suppose?"

"Mostly on accident," he said, eyes shifting deviously.

"Did she ever turn you into a toad?"

He shook his head. "No, but she threatened to hex anyone who came asking for sweets on Halloween, or who came caroling at Christmas."

"How awful," she said, not sounding like she meant it. "So what happened to her?"

"She died, I guess. That's when the Man in Black began showing up."

One eyebrow arched upward, and once again her eyes flashed as she asked, "The man in black?"

"The one you're following."

She gazed off down the street, eyes looking very far away. "Interesting," she murmured. It was several seconds before she turned back and asked, "Do you ever go to the playground?"

"Sometimes," he said, circling lazily to keep pace with her. He, too, paused before continuing,"Me and my friends used to play It."

"_It_? Is that where someone has to run around, trying to catch everyone else?"

His dark, sweaty hair flopped up and down as he nodded.

"We called that Tag in my neighborhood," she said, eyes running over the boarded-up windows, un-mown grass and piled up junk mail that plagued many of the houses on Spinner's End. "It's very quiet along this street."

"It's dinnertime," he mumbled.

She glanced at her wristwatch. "Oh, right. It is that time. What about you? Why aren't you eating dinner, now?"

"My mum's not home yet. I'm not hungry, anyway."

She nodded and continued walking. Seven blocks to the playground. She walked slowly, observing that the houses improved the farther she got from the mill (its chimney brooding over the neighborhood like a gigantic middle finger shouting "fuck you" to everyone living in its shadow), but not by much. The three-bedroom house she'd grown up in was larger than these, though about as well-kept. At least she'd had a real yard, clean air and water that didn't smell like death. Spying on Snape was turning out to be only slightly less depressing than attempting to track down Remus had been. Maybe that was an exaggeration. That had been pretty damn depressing, and she hadn't even found him.

The playground was sad as playgrounds go; with rusted swings, lopsided roundabout and a warped slide. Perhaps they had been painted brightly once, but now they were all the same faded gray. Sharp, dry grass grew up through myriad cracks in the pavement. They stopped and watched the empty swings for a moment, as if there were invisible children playing there that only they could see.

Finally, the boy pedaled around in one final long, slow turn to continue back the way he came. "I'm off, then," he said.

"Wait," she said, as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a chocolate bar. "Thanks for chatting with a stranger. Remember the favor I asked."

He hesitated for just a moment before taking the candy. If he ate it before she got home, then his mother would never know. "You were never here," he said, pedaling away, adding Ms. Sad Eyes to his short list of Mysterious Visitors to Look Out For.

Clio watched him dwindle down the street, feeling momentarily nostalgic for the carefree act of riding a bicycle through a distant tree-shaded neighborhood that she'd long outgrown. She didn't dwell on the memory for long, but turned the corner and headed down the next street.

Seven more blocks to her house. City blocks, short and easily navigable by even small children, especially when there wasn't anywhere else for them to play, or anyone else to play with.

Fourteen blocks, total, from his house to hers.

Remus emerged cautiously from his door, inhaling deeply to get a sense of his surroundings before leaving the safety behind. Garbage, car exhaust, rat poison, heavenly smells from the chocolate factory half a mile away, and finally the more immediate, salty smell of raw meat from the butcher shop one block over and two blocks down. Now his stomach was rumbling.

It was an hour before dawn, and the few working street lights were still lit. He stole quickly through the alley, stealthy in his movements though he was alone except for the rats that scuttled from his path. He ignored the dumpsters along this stretch, his focus on the bounty that he knew lay ahead.

The other gleaners would be emerging soon, but he intended to be long gone by then. The scent of blood and bone in the butcher's bins, perfectly good meat going to waste, drew him like a siren. The heavy lid, effective at keeping out the rats and other vermin and thus preserving the goodies within was easily lifted, the paper-wrapped meat inside easily sifted through with his wand. There were several pounds of pork sausage today. He levitated three pounds out and into a small bag that had been charmed to keep cold for at least an hour. He preferred his meat a little less processed, but he wasn't about to turn his nose up. The real find was buried beneath: several pounds of brisket just on the verge of going bad. No matter, his stomach could handle the extra bacteria. Into the sack it went.

His meat stock replenished, he turned toward the dark, sensual smell of chocolate. He could have tread this path in his sleep, but it was in his nature to remain ever aware of his surroundings. Just a block from the factory he was pulled up short by an out of place scent. Pomegranate. It must be his imagination. He inhaled again and the fragrance remained faint but unmistakable; stabbing him in the heart and stealing his breath with the memory of silken hair twined around his fingers, of a soft throat pressed to his mouth.

Clearly, his guilty conscience must be torturing him. She couldn't possibly have been here, but his nose told him that she had passed this way not more than a day earlier. She couldn't possibly have tracked him here, unless: had he ever mentioned to her the benefits (beyond the obvious) of living in close proximity to a chocolate factory? That the constant presence of chocolate molecules in the air provided a small but measurable protection from dementors, boosting the human immune system while weakening theirs?

He must have, during one of those moments as they walked through the forest (her fingers caressing his, hinting at what was to come later) when he was desperately searching for something interesting to say; or later as she lay in his arms, hair wound around his fingers, and he was once again desperately searching for something interesting to say.

He groaned: these memories were agonizing, now. They ripped him apart from the inside out, and he was helpless to stop them. Sweet memories gave way to bitter thoughts. The coming full moon would almost be a blessing. For one night, at least, she would be driven completely from his mind. Even the physical pain of the transformation was preferable to this.

One hand clutched involuntarily at his chest, where he carried her last letter wrapped around a ticket. He still hadn't decided what to do with it. How much harder would it be to leave her a second time?

* * *

**Author's Note: For anyone who read and enjoyed _Another One Goes By_, thanks for your patience! I hope you enjoy this one as well. To anyone who hasn't read that earlier story, you may want to check it out as well. Thanks for reading!**


	2. Reunion

"Bern-ie! Bern-ie!" The chant rose from sixteen throats as the tall, gawky young man struggled upside down in mid-air, his face growing redder (approaching plum) from the blood rushing to his head. His opponent was a dainty witch whose petite stature and pink apple cheeks belied the strength of the tickling jinxes she hurled at him one after another.

"Come on Lisa, finish him!" shouted a suave, sharply dressed man from the opposite side of the circle that had formed around the dueling pair. His navy suit would not have looked out of place on a banking executive.

"Finish him! Finish him!" The cheer was taken up by the spectators crowded around him.

Bernie had gone into the championship round of the impromptu Salem Alumni Upside Down Dueling Tournament as the favorite. Now a very feisty alumnus of Raven's Claw was handily kicking his ass. Clio narrowed her eyes, pushing away her anger to concentrate on holding Bernie steady. _Levicorpus, levicorpus, levicorpus_, she chanted in her mind, keeping her mouth clamped tight.

The eighteen alumni of the Mugblood and Enoch Banana houses were easily spotted in their jeans and t-shirts among the gathered crowd: they had actually succeeded in their attempts to dress as muggles. The taunting from the wizards and witches dressed in bathrobes and cowboy boots, tutus and parkas, overalls and high heels spurred Bernie to renew his counter attack.

"Gahhhhh!" he shouted, wildly waving his arms. The Raven's Claw alumni all laughed, but the people chanting Bernie's name, along with the others he'd beaten just to get to his match, had an inkling of what was coming. With sweat dripping from his black hair and veins popping out of his beet-colored neck, he stopped laughing and raised his wand. His opponent froze, wand arm outstretched in the act of hurling another hex. The referee, an impartial Quill and Scroll alum who'd been eliminated during the third round, counted down from ten.  
"3 … 2 … 1!" Lisa Ganderson was still immobile. "And our 1994 Upside Dueling Champion is Michael Bernstein!"

A collective "Woo!" rose up as seventeen wands hoisted Bernie upright and set him on his feet. He bowed his head to receive the crown (a paper souvenir from Burger Mage) and trophy (a one-eyed stuffed Kappa doll with pizza sauce stains on the tail) then exchanged a sweaty high five with Clio.

"Thanks for spotting me," he said.

"Any time," she said, glancing to the other side of the circle, where Ganderson had been revived. She scowled at Clio, and Clio scowled back. No doubt she remembered the many times that Clio had knocked her off of her broom playing quodpot; payback for nicknaming her "Hermaphrodite" during their first year.

A pretty young woman with long chestnut hair ran up with Bernie's glasses, which he perched on the bridge of his prodigious nose, then lifted her off her feet and kissed her.

Clio looked away to where the waxing moon was just rising into the sky. It was just a few days short of full, and she found herself wondering once again where Remus was and whether he was all right. Her hand went reflexively to the left side of her belly, to the hole below her ribcage where a burning pain had moved in over the summer and now refused to leave.

* * *

Remus couldn't shake the feeling that someone was dogging his footsteps, and yet every casual glance over his shoulder proved that he was utterly alone. The tantalizing smell of pomegranate had faded. He took a long, winding route back to the hole that he'd called "home" for the past two months, sliding anonymously through thick crowds at a pace to shake any human pursuer. His watched feeling persisted. With just over a block to go, he turned down a narrow alley that most sensible people would avoid. He felt safe here; this was his territory.

Something was in the alley. The dusky shadows had drifted too deep for Remus to make anything out, but he smelled a presence that all the other familiar alley smells (rotting fish and bananas in the fly-infested dumpster, sun-baked urine, stale beer...) couldn't mask. Male dog. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled.

"I know you're there," he said. "You may as well show yourself. We're alone"

The giant black dog (shaggy fur matted and dirty) materialized from the darkness on soft-padded feet. It regarded him with humanlike blue-gray eyes for a moment, then stood up on its hind legs to embrace him. Remus was startled at how thin he was. Could he feel every rib in his chest?

"Padfoot, what are you doing here?" He didn't bother to ask how Sirius had tracked him down, he'd known it was inevitable.

"Harry …" Sirius shook his head. "Something's about to happen, something sinister," he growled, doglike even in his human form. "Have you felt it?"

Remus eyed him warily, then nodded. "Dumbledore has sensed it as well," he whispered. "He spoke to me just yesterday. Moody's stepping in to teach Defense."

Sirius' eyes flashed like steel. "I'm heading north as soon as school begins."

"Don't be foolish," Remus said, the blood draining from his face.

Sirius smiled, the sharp cheek bones that threatened to push through his skin making him look mad. "The dementors couldn't catch me last year, and, anyway, I hear that they've been relocated."

Remus sighed. Arguing with Sirius was pointless. "Come on, let's get you something to eat. Maybe you'll think more clearly when you're not lightheaded from hunger." He began walking toward "home" and Sirius followed, clapping one skeletal hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I've missed you, mate. You don't know how tempted I was to reveal myself whenever I spied you rambling around the school grounds last year."

"I might have killed you, you know."

"That's why I resisted." He grinned again. "That cute little dark-haired witch I saw you with hasn't been around, has she?"

Remus abruptly looked away, clearly expressing his unwillingness to explore that topic.

"Oh Moony, Moony, Moony. What will we do with you?" Sirius patted his slumped shoulders as they walked. "Say, do you know somewhere close by where I could store a hippogriff? It'll only be for a few days, of course."

* * *

Clio found that the best time to fetch water from the communal pump, carrying it through the maze of wizard tents to the Mugbloods' campsite, was early in the morning, while most people still slept. The configuration of the tent village that she wound through now had changed dramatically since they'd arrived two days before, but the gigantic bleeding heart flag hanging above their tent made it easy to locate in the crowd.

She and Jenn had designed it together during their second year at Salem. A few improvements had been made since then, but the basic design remained the same. A red, anatomically correct heart pumped steadily against a black field. Rainbow-striped thunderbird wings sprouted from the heart, flapping in time to the heart beat.

The flag fluttered fitfully this morning. They weren't allowed to use magic to keep it unfurled, here. Clio waved at the nearby group of African wizards gathered around their purple campfire.

One campsite over, the Enoch Banana alumni had chosen to ignore the ban on magic in order to let their flag fly in all its juvenile glory. The animated monkey held an upright banana in its lap. Every 15 seconds, in an endless loop, it would peel the banana and lean forward to take a bite. Her mouth twitched; that monkey gag was so old that it had passed from played out back to funny once again. Some of the Bananas were up and about already, fooling around with a quodpot quaffle. They mumbled hello as she walked past.

Derrick was up, too, expertly building a cooking fire for breakfast.

"Hey," she said, setting the water a few feet from where he squatted, blowing life into the smoldering tinder. As far as anyone outside their small circle could tell, Derrick was just another American wizard, rather than the British muggle he actually was.

"Trying to conceal this lot is an exercise in futility," he said, feeding a few twigs into the infant flames licking up the logs he'd stacked in a teepee.

"True," she sighed. "It'd be easier for the Ministry to just pay the caretaker and his family extra to keep quiet."

He frowned, brow furrowing, and Clio guessed that he was remembering the oblivation of the caretaker's wife that he'd witnessed the day they arrived. "It shouldn't be legal, what they're doing," he said.

"Agreed," she murmured, rubbing at her left arm. It was still sore from the stinging hex that had ended her own run in the previous day's tournament during the second round. The squid tattoo on her shoulder responded to her touch, changing from black to purple to red, shifting it's eyes to watch her fingers, and waving it's tentacles as if it were trying to grab her hand.

Derrick blinked, his sleepy brown eyes catching the movement in the ink beneath her skin. It hadn't taken him long to begin noticing the wizards' moving pictures, and while they occasionally startled him, he found them fascinating.

"Is Charity up yet?" she asked.

"She was just waking up when I popped out five minutes ago. You want coffee, I assume?" he said, picking up the pot.

"If coffee tasted exactly like it smells, I would just pore this entire bag into my mouth and start chewing," she said, sitting down with the coffee grinder in one hand and a bag of freshly roasted beans in the other. She drank in the rich earthy scent as she cranked the grinder.

Once the coffee was brewing, she returned to the tent for what Bernie had so charmingly dubbed a whore bath, and to change from her pajama shorts and tank shirt into the Ireland jersey she'd purchased just for this match and the shorts she'd made from her favorite holey jeans. Jenn and Wyatt's 2-year old daughter, Hanna, ran past her as she emerged from the designated ladies' room, chasing Bernie with a pillow. Bernie cackled maniacally, making Hanna giggle and run faster. He pretended to trip, then fall, rolling over onto his back. She pounced on him, smashing the pillow down onto his considerable nose and then flopping on top of it, wrestlemania style.

"Can't … breathe," he gasped, kicking his legs and flailing his arms. Hanna giggled like mad until he stopped moving. She stood up, smiling triumphantly, and removed the pillow.

"Gahhhhhhhhhh!" Bernie yelled. She ran off squealing and the game began again. It was impossible to sleep with their racket, and even the hardcore night owls had emerged from their beds by now.

Krista took Clio's place in the bathroom. Charity, who had fallen back asleep after Derrick left to tend the fire, was now up and flipping pancakes. Wyatt grilled sausages while Jenn nursed a mug of chocolate cream tea. Emily sat on one end of the couch reading a _Sandman_ comic while Sara sat at the opposite end reading _Healing Severe Spell Damage_, feet meeting in the middle, both totally oblivious to the commotion around them. Henry brooded over his lyre in the corner, checking each of the unicorn hair strings to make sure none were wearing thin.

Clio and Henry were the only two single parties in the tent: a fact that hit Clio at times like this one. She imagined waking up with Remus, gazing into his silvery gray eyes, kissing him and feeling his stubbly cheek against hers ...

"Clio! Pancakes are ready!" Charity called.

She walked outside. That was all in the past. Still, there was a chance, she thought. _A slim chance_, she reminded herself, trying not to feel hopeful.

Charity handed her a plate of pancakes and mug of black coffee.

"Thanks," she said, as she sat down and mechanically began to eat. Remus had never responded either way, but she'd sent his ticket via owl post and it hadn't been returned. _That was a good sign, wasn't it?_

Charity exchanged a knowing glance with Henry and Jenn. They'd all seen Clio with the unfocused expression she wore now, and had an idea of where her mind was.

Bernie left immediately after scarfing down a plate of sausages to interview players, his press pass swinging proudly from his neck. Once the fire was extinguished and the mess from breakfast was cleaned up, the rest of them began looking for ways to fill the hours before heading to the quidditch stadium. They all bounced the quaffle around for awhile, the friendly passing gradually turning into an improvised game of dodgeball that ended abruptly when Krista took a hit directly to the eye.

Sara, about to begin her final year of healer training, took her aside to fix it. In the meantime, one of the Bananas had brought out a hookah packed with herbs that filled the air with a sickly green smell. After it had been passed around a few times, the lunch fires were stoked (with not a small amount of giggling) and bottles of Wyatt's home-brewed beer were distributed.

They were all taking turns tossing Hanna into the air when Eddie Kowalski ran out from the Enoch Banana tent with his accordian and struck up a polka. Henry went into their tent and returned with his lyre and Clio's guitar.

"Nine strings?" Clio said, noticing that the three treble strings had been doubled since last night. She gave them a strum, liking the jangly chorus effect.

"You're ready," Henry said.

Jenn grabbed her banjo. Just as Jenn was complaining that they needed drums, another Banana ran up with a pair of bongos, and now they had a proper band.

"Anyone remember the words to "Everyone in Pants?". A dozen hands rose into the air, and that's how they ended up running through the entire songbook for _How to Dress Like A Muggle Without Really Trying_, a musical they'd created one year to mock the purebloods on campus who had begun celebrating the first Friday each May as Dress Like A Muggle Day. At first they'd retaliated by instituting Dress Like A Pureblood Trying to Dress Like a Muggle Day on the first Saturday of May, but none of the purebloods had gotten the joke.

Under the guise of an independent project that had garnered Jenn a score of 350% in her Muggle Studies class, the stated mission of the show was to educate their fellow students on proper Muggle dress and etiquette. In reality, it was 45 minutes of song parodies such as "Tees, Glorious Tees," sung to the tune of a 1980s-era commercial for cheese:

Tees, glorious tees!  
Look mighty inviting!  
Tees, glorious tees!  
In colors so tantalizing!  
Whether you wear them  
Tight or loose,  
Mild or wild,  
Cotton tees look good on you.  
Try on tees!  
Marvelous tees!  
Wonderful tees!  
Glor-i-ous teeeeees!

"One Shoe, Two Shoe, Red Shoe, Blue Shoe," preached the importance of choosing the right shoe for every occasion, and everybody's favorite, the Calypso-infused "Everybody in Pants! (Pants Go On Your Legs)," extolled the virtues of the titular garment while simultaneously providing helpful advice to distinguish pants from non-pants:

Everybody in pants! (Pants go on your legs)  
Everybody in pants! (Pants go on your legs)  
No, no, no, no chaps aren't pants!  
Chaps aren't pants? (They go on your legs)  
Chaps aren't pants! (They don't cover your ass)

A crowd gathered as they played, and soon they began to improvise. Clio followed Henry's lead at first, winding harmonies around whatever he played, until her guitar grew petulant and pushed her to take a turn at the melody herself. She'd learned an entirely new playing style, based on the blues that she'd been immersed in during the weeks she'd spent helping Henry set up his guitar studio that summer.

He'd been prepared to compete directly with his former mentor, but fortuitously, the old bastard had decided to retire. Now the long, narrow shop in the Maxwell Street Market where he'd been taking apart and putting instruments together since he was nine was all his. The blues suited both Clio and her guitar, and the skill that she'd lost during her years away from the instrument had gradually returned with the hours and hours of practice she'd put in.

"Callimachus!"

Clio looked up and around, searching the crowd that had gathered for the source of the voice. Tall, lanky Bill Weasley, trailed by two other redheads, clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder. One she recognized immediately as his younger sister Ginny, and the third (built more like the twins but possessing many more scars) must be their brother Charlie, who she had heard of but never met.

"Hey, Bill," Clio said as she stood up.

"So you're rooting for the Irish, too, then?" he said, pointing at her jersey. "Mullet fans?"

"Yeah, sort of," she admitted. "The Mullet jerseys are sort of an inside joke."

"I don't get it," he said.

"Mullet's brilliant," Charlie added.

"Go Mullet!" Emily yelled.

"Business up front, party in the back!" Kowalski shouted in return.

Clio smiled sheepishly. "Hey, you must remember Charity Burbage?" she said, putting her blond friend in the spotlight. Charity, hanging off of Derrick's arm, smiled and winked.

"Yes, I do remember," Bill said, turning to her with a wide grin. Charlie quickly smoothed down his hair and stood up a little straighter as Charity walked up to shake hands. Ginny rolled her eyes at her brothers. Clio caught her eye and smiled. Ginny smiled briefly, then stuck her tongue out at Charlie's back.

Charity introduced Derrick as her American friend, and Derrick did his best to imitate a New England accent.

"Have you seen Professor Lupin?" Ginny asked Clio.

"No," she said, startled but making her face appear neutral. "Not since he left."

"Oh," Ginny said. "I thought maybe you stayed in touch..." Her voice trailed off.

"I did hear from him once," Clio said, thinking of the money he'd returned to her when she'd tried to repay him for the guitar. The note he'd included had said simply:

_It was a gift. -R  
_

"I think he's doing okay," she said softly, forcing her mind back to the present and plastering on a smile.

Ginny smiled hesitantly. "Do you know who's teaching DADA this year?"

Clio frowned. "I'm afraid I've been away all summer. An old friend of Dumbledore's, that much I know." she said.

"Come on Ginny, dad's going to have a fit if we get you back late," Bill said then, glancing at his watch. "Good seeing you again Callimachus, Charity," he said. The trio moved off and was quickly swallowed by the crowd. Dusk was approaching.

Clio's stomach dropped when the horns announcing the match went off. A raucous cheer rose up from the group surrounding her.

"It's time," Charity said, squeezing her arm. Clio nodded and allowed herself to be swept along with the crowd walking through the woods to the stadium. He'd either meet her in the stands, or not. They walked forever it seemed: Hanna riding on Wyatt's shoulders, Derrick fearfully clutching Charity's hand, Sara and Krista skipping, Emily and Henry singing the Mullet fight song that they'd composed under the influence of the green herbs and Jenn stopping every few yards to take pictures.

Clio's own camera swung uselessly from the strap on her neck. She was too busy scanning the faces in the crowd to think about taking pictures. They entered the stadium and she didn't see him, they reached their section and she didn't see him. Her eyes swept their rows of seats and still she didn't see him, but as she approached her seat she discovered that there was _someone_ sitting in the seat next to hers.

"Wow, Clio. You said he was a few years older, but, wow," Emily said of the very old man sitting in Remus' seat. He was pockmarked, slightly green-tinged and definitely not Remus, but her last desperate hope was that he'd taken polyjuice potion so as not to be recognized. _And possibly to keep me at a distance_, she thought.

"Hey," she said to the ancient man, straining to keep her voice steady. "I was hoping a good friend of mine was going to be sitting here."

"Ah, you must be Miss Callimachus," he said, killing Clio's last shred of hope. "Lupin said I was to look for a vivacious young woman with beautiful long brown hair, but I suppose two out of three isn't bad."

Clio's hand went instinctively to her close-cropped hair. It had grown quite a bit since she'd shaved it off completely at the beginning of the summer, but unless she used magic it would be at least a year before it could be called long again.

"So you've seen him?" Clio asked, fighting back tears.

"Yes, he gave me this to give to you," he said, handing her a plain envelope.

"How is he, these days?" she asked.

"Oh, not bad, I'd say," he said, looking at her wet eyes with sympathy. "A little on the skinny side, maybe."

She missed the leprechauns going by as she tore open the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

_Clio,_

_I'm sorry, but I can't see you now. I hope you will forgive me, but will understand if you don't.  
I think you will find that Elphias Doge is good company. He's an old friend of Dumbledore's and  
has done quite a bit of traveling – including to Greece and Egypt. He works in the Ministry and  
may have knowledge of the Department of Mysteries.  
-R_

Damn him, even when he smashed her heart he did it in the kindest way he knew how. Her own efforts to research the Department of Mysteries had turned up zilch.

"So," she said, sniffling, "You must be Elphias Doge?"

"Yes!" he said, brightening up, "That I am. I hear you've spent a few years in Egypt?"

She nodded.

"I was there a very long time ago, and I still remember my first carpet ride. Did you get a chance to fly one while you were there?"

"Yes," she said, "They're lovely. I rode one this summer while visiting friends."

"There's some who would like to import them here, for family transport. Unfortunately the Ministry won't allow it."

"That _is_ unfortunate," she said, and in her mind she was lounging on a carpet high above the Aegean with Archie and Zain, passing a wineskin around as they watched Santorini unfold below. She'd been an absolute mess when she showed up on Archie and Zain's doorstep in Alexandria. The entire story of her and Remus had spilled out over a couple bottles of wine, and they'd taken turns rocking her as she bawled, then holding her hair up as she vomited over and over again into the formerly pristine toilet in their newly renovated guest bathroom.

It was sometime during the following two days that she'd spent with them that she'd decided she was tired of long hair. They'd been walking through the open air market when a toothless old woman hawking homemade dolls had offered to purchase it from her. She'd shrugged and sat down an empty orange crate, tipping her head over a canvas bag as the woman sheared it off, right down to the scalp. She'd been paid a galleon for it.

Feeling the cool sea air brush her naked skull had felt surprisingly wonderful, and not having to wash or brush it (or hold it up as she heaved over the toilet) had been liberating. After another night of drinking, her friends had informed her that it was time for her to sober up. They'd held a diving trip to the Cyclades up as as a golden carrot, and two days later they'd taken the flying carpet to Santorini.

Doge smiled and said, "You know, you bear a striking resemblance to your grandfather."

She caught her breath. "Did you know him?" she asked.

"A little, yes. A very congenial man he was; always quick with a joke."

Her mouth twitched. "Did you know him through the Ministry, then?"

He nodded. "I'd been working there a long time already when he started. Croaker started about the same time he did. I actually saw him running about here earlier, I'll give a holler if I spy him again. What year was it, let me see..."

"Croaker?" she asked, making a mental note to look him up later.

A cheer went up around them as Mullet soared into the stadium.

"Goodness, you Americans certainly like Mullet, don't you?" Doge said.

"Yeah, there's even a haircut named after him," she mumbled. "Did he ever talk about what he did there, my grandfather?" Clio asked, the match forgotten.

"Oh, goodness no. Terrible things would happen to any Unspeakable who violated protocol."

"Oh," Clio said, a bit deflated. More cheers and whistles went up from the crowd as the veela sashayed by for Hungary.

"I do know he was always fascinated by time."

"Time?" Clio raised an eyebrow. She'd been secretly hoping that he did something with time travel.

"He was reprimanded once for asking too many questions about the time turners."

"Oh," Clio said.

"Unspeakables from one area aren't even supposed to know what their counterparts in other areas are working on. All of your grandfather's work was kept locked up."

"I see," she said.

"Here comes Krum!" Doge yelled, clapping. "He's really something!"

Clio turned back to the match. That's why she was here, wasn't it?


	3. Scream

Bernie's braying laughter echoed throughout the tent. The World Cup was over, and they'd all ambled back in various states of drunkeness to celebrate for one last night before heading their separate ways.

"Spock or Doctor Who?" asked Emily.

"Spock!" yelled Jenn.

"Which Doctor?" chorused Clio, Henry and Derrick.

"The one with the scarf," said Bernie.

Emily responded, "Tom Baker," and the three-person chorus, "Fourth Doctor," simultaneously.

"The Doctor," said Henry.

"The Doctor," said Derrick.

"That's a tough one," said Clio with a grimace, earning groans from her fellow Whovians.

Bernie cackled again, "You're all weird."

Clio pulled the letter from her pocket and read it for the umpteenth time.

"Again?" Charity asked. "Are you going to be up all night analyzing it?"

Clio glanced at her briefly before returning to the paper in her hands. She barely resisted her urge to sniff it again. It smelled a bit menthol-ish from riding in Mr. Doge's pocket all day, but underneath the medicine scent she had detected a seductively familiar hint of earthy musk. "What do you think he meant by 'I can't see you now'?" she asked.

Whatever Charity said was drowned out by Bernie's sonorous voice.

"If he saw you now he'd just want to fuck your brains out!"

"Bernie, language!" Jenn angrily gestured to where Hanna sat on the floor, levitating multicolored blocks into a tower.

"Sorry," Bernie said with his impish cackle. "I, uh, mean he'd invite you to ride his broomstick, and you know you'd say yes."

Clio sighed.

"Then he'd feel guilty and sh-"

Jenn glared at Bernie.

"-stuff afterward. So instead he decided to stay home and polish his wand like every other night."

"I'm going to get ready for bed," Clio said, refolding the letter. She suspected that Bernie's assessment of the situation was correct, although he'd guessed wrong about who would be inviting whom to bed.

"You need to move on, Clio," Jenn said, warning in her voice.

"I know," she said, fetching her pajama shirt and shorts from the floor of her sleeping compartment on her way to the bathroom.

"I'm pretty sure Kowalski would be willing to tickle your snitch, if that's all you want," Henry said. Clio swatted him with her shirt as she passed.

"Hey, if it gets him to stop playing that effing accordion for ten minutes, then I'm all for it," Emily said.

"Ten minutes?" said Wyatt, spitting up beer.

"I think that's a little optimistic, actually," Krista replied.

"He probably wouldn't even stop playing," Henry added.

Clio slammed the bathroom door before she had to see or hear their impressions of Eddie Kowalski trying to play the accordion and have sex at the same time. She had pressed both hands to her side, thinking that she could scoop the pain out if only she had the right instrument, when the screaming began.

"What's going on?" she yelled, bursting into the living room with her wand in hand.

"They're torturing muggles!" Sara screamed, scrambling back in through the tent flap.

Clio and Charity exchanged wide-eyed looks. "Who is?"

"They're wearing masks! They've got the caretaker and his family."

The entire tent erupted as eight witches and wizards dove for their wands. Clio grabbed her sneakers and shoved them onto her bare feet as she ran for the exit. Everyone piled up around it, pushing to get through in single file.

"Derrick, you have to stay in here," Charity said, face white.

"Watch Hanna," Wyatt said.

"We can't leave them here unguarded!" Jenn protested, in a voice with the power to compel even Bernie to obey. "Charity, you stay here and guard the tent."

Charity nodded, holding her wand up like a sword.

Clio stuck her head back into the tent flap. "I'm putting runes on the door!" she shouted, lighting the end of her wand and burning the protective symbols into the canvas. "The password is 'Mullet.' No one gets through here without saying that word. Stun anything that comes in without announcing itself," she said, before running out into the night.

Every alumnus of the Mugblood and Enoch Banana houses had muggle friends or relatives and some amount of alcohol cycling through their bodies. They fanned out from their campsite like a swarm of angry wasps defending a disturbed hive, honing in on the horde of masked, hooded figures that thrust its way through the tent city. The campground's caretaker and his family hovered high over their heads, powerless to fight back.

"Those are children!" Wyatt raged, pointing to the two smallest figures floating as high as 60 feet in the air. Bernie raised his wand to hurl a curse at the closest perpetrators, but was stopped by Krista.

"No! If you break their spells they'll just drop them!"

They gaped, horrified, as the Death Eaters marched past and continued on. Something primal stirred Clio's blood as she watched the figures, all cloaked in black, part the crowd. They were a far cry from the monsters that had populated her imagination since childhood. She might have found their costumes comical if their victims weren't in real danger. Instead she felt only anger. It burned through her veins like magma, threatening to erupt. Her wand responded with heat. The Death Eaters' crimes could not go unpunished tonight.

"Come on, we can't let them get away," Clio urged, running to catch up with the mob.

"Blood traitors!" the lead Death Eater yelled in a haughty voice that was distorted by his mask. "You're all disgraces to wizardkind, running out here in muggle clothing!"

"You're nothing but cowards!" Bernie yelled back. "Why don't you show us your faces!"

There were other witches and wizards running alongside the rioters, as well. A few Ministry officials tried to stop the mob by listing the rules they were breaking and the punishments for each offense, but that seemed only to egg them on. Some laughed, and a few actually clapped when jail time in Azkaban was mentioned.

"These aren't even real Death Eaters! The real ones are all in Azkaban already," Clio taunted. "What did you say to get off, that you'd been imperiused?" she yelled directly to the masked figure on her left. He turned his head towards her, momentarily distracted.

Emily kept up the verbal attack, "Now you're trying to feel all bad ass by levitating a few muggles? How pathetic." Agitation began to build among the crowd.

A few onlookers had actually swelled the mob's ranks in drips and drabs, following along behind and laughing at the man, woman and children as they spun overhead. An energy flowed through the crowd that was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Clio ran along, swept up by it, feeding it, riding it like a wild beast that could turn on her at any moment and devour her.

"Aww, hell no!" Wyatt groaned, pointing to an infamous black flag marked with a skull and cross bones. "Who let them in?"

The Jolly Rogers continued to enjoy their reputation as the most controversial house on the Salem campus. Officially, they vehemently claimed to idolize the egalitarian ethos of eighteenth-century pirates. Unofficially, everyone knew them for what they really were: neo-Death Eaters, Death Eaters-lite; poseurs who dressed in black, carved skulls on their skin and met in a heavily-draped, smoke-filled lounge to plan midnight bonfires deep within the swamp.

There were half a dozen of them here now, following along in the mob's wake, laughing and jeering at the Muggle family, ignored by the masked figures they desperately desired to impress.

Wyatt and Bernie might have picked a fight with the tag-alongs if Jenn hadn't been there to separate them with a shield charm. She shamed many of the gapers into returning to their tents with a few snaps of her camera shutter and the power of her withering glare. Someday, Jenn might give McGonagall a run for her money, Clio thought.

"Callimachus!" Clio turned toward the familiar voice to see Bill and his brothers Charlie and Percy running along with the crowd from the Ministry, wands at the ready. "How come no one's stopping them?"

"Everyone's afraid they'll just drop the victims." Clio said, wishing once again that Remus were there. He would know what to do.

"You should leave this up to the Ministry, professor, you could get seriously hurt," Percy said.

"There aren't enough Ministry officials here to stop anybody," Bill said. "Do you really think you're accomplishing anything by shouting regulations at them?"

"No one's impressed that you can recite the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy of 1689," Charlie added.

"We need to stratagize," Bernie said, falling back on what he'd learned as a quodpot team captain.

"We should get ahead of them and set up a barrier," Charlie said. "Stop them going forward, then surround them,"

"Brilliant!" Bill answered.

"We need to get clearance from the top Min-"

"Works with dragons," Charlie replied over his brother Percy.

"And mum thought dragon wrangling wasn't practical." Bill said. "Now, how do we set up a barrier?" Charlie cocked an eyebrow, and Bill nodded. "Oh, right."

They split everyone who was actually trying to stop the Death Eaters into two groups. Clio wanted to run forward with the Weasleys, but Bernie and Jenn both stopped her.

"Come on Clio, you know you're way better with levitation than hexes," Bernie said.

"Fuck you, Bernie. You think you know everything just because you won some stupid tournament! We're not limited to non-damaging spells, you know," she bellowed, barely able to contain the heat pulsing from her wand. Bernie turned without another word, storming after the Weasleys. Jenn's eyes fell to Clio's left hand, suspicions confirmed by the trail of smoke curling from her wand tip.

"I would think you'd _want_ to help keep those people from falling to their deaths," she said in her hardest voice, then took off after Bernie. Wyatt and Henry followed her, while Clio reluctantly joined the second group as it prepared to hem the Death Eaters in on the sides. She stayed near the front, with Emily and Sara – and Lisa Ganderson, of all people, who'd run up with some of the other Raven's Claw alums.

"I'm surprised to see you here," Clio spat at the diminutive blonde witch.

"You think I'm not just as disgusted by this display as you are?" she spat back.

Up ahead, the front guard was dividing into pairs. "We don't want to stun them, because the muggles will fall, so instead we're going to make a lightning fence," Charlie called out.

"A what?" Bernie asked, speaking for everyone who had no idea what he was talking about.

"Use the fulgura charm in groups of two, one to cast, one to ground. We'll do it in staggered intervals," Bill said. "Percy, you can go back with Callimachus if you're so worried about her," he added with a wink.

Percy shook his head, looking suspiciously pale beneath his freckles. "Mr. Crouch is going to be very disappointed," he said.

The pairs dropped to the ground at five-foot intervals, First Bill and Charlie, then Wyatt and Bernie, then Henry and Percy (who was still trying to talk the others into leaving) with Jenn at the end, still snapping pictures even as she prepared to stun anyone who made it through the gauntlet.

"Sir, it's not too late for you to move to a safe distance," Percy said, just as Henry extended his wand and sent a bolt of blue lightning directly across the Death Eaters' path to him. Percy caught it with his wand and held on. Having a task to concentrate on finally shut him up.

"Thank God," Bernie muttered.

The Death Eaters saw the alternating blue jets of lightning arc from three pairs of wands well before running into them. They hit Charlie and Bill's first, and decided to fight. Clio didn't catch the whole scuffle because she was concentrating on controlling her wand, which was spitting golden sparks.

She heard a rough voice shout "Sectumsempra!" and from the corner of her eye saw Bill's wand arm spill blood without having been touched. He gritted his teeth, together with Charlie maintaining the lightning stream and sending the entire front row of Death Eaters into spasms as they were pushed forward from behind. One of them fell forward onto Charlie, clutching at his shirt and ripping it halfway from his body.

"Charity would have liked to see that," Clio murmured.

"Hey, here they come!" Lisa cried shrilly in her ear and jabbed a bony elbow into her side. Clio looked up in time to see the caretaker's wife float by, tumbling forward and back like a beach ball at a concert. She counted the wands held aloft, waiting to catch the four captives. There were three wands for each person; her friends were probably being slashed to ribbons, and she wasn't even needed here.

If there had been only one or two wizards in the Death Eaters' way, they would have charged right through the gauntlet, but after barely making it through the first line of lightning and seeing two more ahead, a few tried to turn back the way they came. Meanwhile, more Ministry officials had arrived to prevent their escape. Other Death Eaters split off to the sides, but more onlookers had already closed in, and prepared to stun them as soon as the muggles were safely on the ground.

Clio's wand smoked and sparked, shaking in her hand. She closed her eyes, concentrated on still water, and felt her wand begin to settle. Suddenly, more screams rose up in the distance. Her eyes flew open as an uncanny green glow spread overhead. Everyone, masked and unmasked alike, looked up to see a glimmering skull stretch itself across the sky. Clio had only seen the Dark Mark in pictures, and had never expected to see it in person. It distracted her now for a moment, and her wand arm drooped. Inexplicably, the mob all stopped cold and disapparated.

Clio jumped forward as the Death Eaters began to vanish. They would have allowed the muggles to drop to their deaths if there weren't wizards in place to arrest their falls. The muggle woman dangled overhead, held aloft by two other wands. There was one Death Eater very close to her, a big oafish one, who moved half a step slower than his counterparts. His first attempt at apparition had failed.

"Ganderson, have you got her?" Clio asked

"Of course I have her," came her exasperated reply.

There was no time to weigh her decision. Clio ran and leapt at the slowpoke, throwing her arms around his neck and her legs around his back.

Someone screamed her name, but she didn't turn to see who it was. She held on for dear life as she felt the familiar pull in her stomach. She and the Death Easter disapparated together, and for a moment she felt nothing.

When they came to earth again, he immediately began thrashing, trying to throw her from his back. Clio was outmatched, and she knew it. Jumping onto this guy's back was quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done, she thought, not more than thirty seconds after doing it. She clenched her wand tightly in her left hand, but couldn't concentrate on a proper spell as she was hurled first one way then another. Instead, she dug her nails into the right side of his neck and grabbed at his hood with her teeth.

He roared in pain, redoubling his efforts to shake her, and succeeding only in throwing the hood from his massive blond head. Three of her nails ripped off of her fingers, pulled out so fast that she didn't feel anything at first, and only realized what had happened when she saw blood on her fingertips.

The Death Eater brought his wand hand up and began shooting hexes at her blindly over his back. His aim was terrible, and they missed her one after another, scorching the ground instead. Clio, realizing that one of these times he may get lucky and actually hit her, gathered her senses enough to respond with a shield charm. Shields she could do, patronuses, _defensive_ spells. She could dodge, block, outrun. But even in quodpot she had never been any good at offense.

Safe for the time being, Clio grabbed at the edge of his mask with her free hand; clinging tightly to him with her legs. He whipped his head violently away, stumbling, falling to the left and landing on her as he tumbled to the ground. His weight pressed painfully into her left knee, forcing it toward the ground at an odd angle. She yelped in pain, and a burst of bright gold flame shot from her wand into the side of his neck, setting his cloak alight.

Fire was the best weapon she had, and even in the best of circumstances she had very little control over it. His high-pitched scream might have made her laugh, if the heat from the fire hadn't also finally spurred him to break free of her grip. His lunged forward with so much force that he tore her wand out of her hand. She lay defenseless on the ground, left leg crumpled under her body, knowing that she needed her wand if she hoped to survive.

"Accio wand!" she cried, just before he whirled and fired yet another curse. Her wand shot toward her, ever faithful despite its independent streak, but this time his curse finally landed. Her wand bounced off of her outstretched hand a fraction of a second later, and fell to the ground. She'd been body-bound. Her wand was mere centimeters from her fingers, but it may as well have been miles away. She couldn't pick it up. She concentrated on calling it, repeating _accio wand_, a_ccio wand_, _accio wand_ in her mind. It jumped off the ground and hit her splayed fingers again and again and again, but she was unable to grasp it.

Laughing, the blond Death Eater brushed the last of the flames from his clothes and stooped to collect her wand. It discharged a last lick of flame, burning his fingers. He swore as he dropped it, was about to stomp it into the ground, then thought better of it and pulled out a soiled handkerchief to pick it up and insert it into a pocket of his charred robes.

"Crucio," he muttered, pointing his own wand at Clio. She would have screamed if she could, as a flash of intense pain, like a drill biting into her spine, swept over her body. Instead, tears streamed silently down her cheeks. She thought again of the Mediterranean, of cool blue-green water washing over the heat of the pain and quelling it.

"Crucio" he said again, frustrated that her petrified state kept her from screaming and writhing on the ground. Even though most of his face was a mystery, she saw the annoyance written on his furrowed brow and down-turned mouth. Wanting to laugh, and not being able to, she concentrated on the only parts of her body that weren't in pain at the moment: her finger tips. The pain subsided.

He approached her then, heavy boots trampling dry grass and kicking up dust. She held her breath and tried her best to make her eyes vacant. The dead and unconscious weren't any fun to torture, were they? He spit at her, missing her eye and getting her ear. She felt the cold wet ball of slime oozing along her ear canal and fought the bile that rose up her esophagus in response.

Behind his head, the nearly-full moon loomed bright white in the wide open sky. They had apparently apparated to a deserted moor. The moonlight was too bright for her to make out any familiar constellations.

He kicked her hard in the side, sending her rolling over on to her stomach. She waited through an interminable stretch of time for his next attack. She heard a whip-like crack overhead, then nothing. It was with great relief that she realized he'd disapparated. She let out her breath and took in another, sneezing out the dust that infiltrated her nose with the warm night air.

In her mind, Clio screamed. In reality she lay flat on her belly: mouth, nose and eyes in the dirt. She had no wand, and no one knew where she was.


	4. Misguided Angel

The situation in the Mugbloods' tent grew increasingly panicked. The riot, though terrifying, had resulted in no major injuries. The Weasleys had run off to round up their younger siblings, and Sara was now now tending to the minor cuts and bruises Henry and Wyatt had sustained during the scuffle. Clio's disappearance was the source of the current hysteria.

"What do you mean you don't know where she is?" Charity yelled for the third time.

"I saw her jump onto one of the Death Eaters right before he disapparated," Emily said, voice shaking. "Who knows where he was going? Do they have a secret fort where they all hang out?"

"That's not funny," Charity said.

"Sorry," Emily muttered, "that's just how I deal with shit like this."

Jenn held Hanna on her lap, staring over her daughter's head at the tent flap, as if staring hard enough could make Clio walk through it. Bernie, meanwhile, sulked on the couch, cracking his knuckles more times and in more ways than seemed humanly possible.

"I have to tell Dumbledore. He's the only person who has any chance of finding her," Charity said, frantically throwing her clothes and things into her satchel. "If he can't ... he'll know what to do."

"Shouldn't we report this to the Ministry?" Wyatt asked.

"They won't do anything about it until it's too late," Charity said, throwing on a jacket. "Come on Derrick, I'll drop you at home, first."

She grabbed his arm, making it clear that this was not negotiable. He nodded mutely, looking pale and shaken. His introduction into the wizarding world had ended on a decidedly sour note.

Charity dropped him in the garden behind his London flat, (where he promptly bent over and heaved everything he'd eaten and drunk over the last six hours into the bushes).

"You have to give me more warning next time," he said, looking as green as Elphias Doge.

"Sorry, love," she struggled with what else to say. "I have to go. We'll talk later."

"When will I see you again?" he said, wiping his mouth.

"Soon."

"Are you going to explain to me what is going on?" he asked, just as she disappeared with a pop.

She landed again just inside her parents' dark and quiet flat, shouted "Incendio!" and paused just long enough to grab a handful of floo powder from the decorative glass bowl above the mantle before flinging herself into the flames.

"The Hog's Head" she called out, choosing the one establishment in Hogsmeade that would still be open at this hour. She ignored the whistles and stares of the creeps hanging about the bar, charging out the front door and apparating to the Hogwarts gates. She felt slightly queasy, herself, but as she walked, then jogged, then ran to the castle she exchanged that feeling for fear.

She was out of breath when she finally barged in through the main door, running into Professor McGonagall and almost knocking her down.

"Good heavens, Charity! What are you doing running in here at this time of night?" she said, casting a critical eye over her casual muggle clothing.

"Is Dumbledore here? I need to speak to him. Right away!"

"He should be in his office. What is going on?"

"There were Death Eaters. Rioting at the World Cup! Clio's disappeared."

"Oh my," McGonagall said, mouth pinching tight. She hustled to the stairs without another word, Charity running to keep up.

Dumbledore listened soberly to her story, pieced together from Emily and Jenn's accounts, then immediately cast his patronus through the floo with a message.

"Severus, your immediate assistance is required. Be prepared for … enhanced interrogation."

"Snape? You're joking," Charity said with a scowl. McGonagall scowled beside her.

Dumbledore smiled, eyes twinkling. "Who better to track down a Death Eater?"

Snape skulked into Dumbledore's office a minute later, a black cloak thrown over his black robes and heavy boots on his feet. He glanced around at Professors McGonagall and Burbage, registering immediately that they resented his presence. Of course, that was the norm; especially since the end of last term.

"You rang, Headmaster?" he asked softly.

"Yes, Severus. I'm afraid it's going to be a long night for you. I have a job that requires your unique set of skills."

"I see," he said stiffly, wondering when Dumbledore would get to the point.

"Professor Burbage has just come from the World Cup, where there was a Death Eater riot a little while ago. It appears that the Death Eaters all disapparated before they could be arrested, and Professor Callimachus attempted to, ah, stop one of them."

His face had gone still and white as Dumbledore spoke, and now he muttered, "Idiot,"under his breath before asking, "Where is she now?"

"None of us know," Dumbledore said. "I'd like you to find her."

He said nothing for what seemed like a very long time, nostrils flaring angrily, before nodding curtly.

"What did this Death Eater look like?" he asked, turning his cold eyes on Charity.

She quailed under his scrutiny. "I didn't see myself, but someone said he was big and … oafish."

He sighed, rolling his eyes. "That narrows it down. A bit."

"You may use my fireplace to go where ever you need," Dumbledore said, holding out a cookie jar full of floo powder. "You're on your own for the return trip, I'm afraid."

Snape grabbed a handful of the glittering powder as he swept furiously to the Headmaster's fireplace, which was just tall enough that he did not need to stoop. Callimachus was an even bigger fool that he'd previously assumed, if she thought she could do the work of an auror. She'd be very lucky indeed to make it out of this unscathed, and now he'd have to risk his own very precarious status to find her. He scowled at the thought.

"Thank you, Severus," said Dumbledore. "One more thing. When you find her, please be civil. I'm growing rather fond of our runemaster and would like to keep her around."

"As would I," McGonagall reiterated.

"The Leaky Cauldron," he droned, anxious to remove himself from Burbage's angry and fearful eyes.

He was barely through the floo before he began scanning the crowd gathered in the Leaky Cauldron, dark eyes sweeping from left to right and not finding those who he sought. He tapped the back wall impatiently and strode through the opening into Diagon Alley beyond, but this wasn't his destination, either. He turned down dark, twisted Knockturn Alley and followed his ears to the grimy pub where he was most likely to find revelatory Death Eaters at this hour.

There were three categories of people who the Dark Lord attracted. The first were the very old pureblood families who lived luxuriously and wished to keep it that way no matter the cost. The second were wizards of low status who aspired to live highly and were too dim to realize that their high class counterparts would never share. Luckily for Callimachus, the third category (nutters who enjoyed torturing and killing for sport) had all been locked away in Azkaban. All except Black, that is.

_Black didn't-_ he buried this thought deep before it had a chance to properly form.

It was the lowlifes that he would visit first. People like the Malfoys might enjoy torturing muggles, but they had always been reluctant to dirty their hands with wizard blood. If she'd been stupid enough to piggyback on Lucius Malfoy, then chances were she'd show up in jail the next morning, charged with trespassing on his property. The lowlifes had no such scruples. If she'd hitched a ride with one of them, then she might be dead already.

A small crowd had gathered at the back of the dim room, raucous guffaws rising up from their midst. He glanced at them casually as he strolled nonchalantly to the bar.

"Catechu vodka with absinthe," he purred. The drink tasted disgusting, but one couldn't walk into a Death Eater bar at two in the morning and order nettle wine. "To the Dark Lord," he said, raising the swirling black and green contents of his glass to the surly, scar faced bartender, and then to the rowdy group seated behind him.

"The Dark Lord!" they responded, like sheep.

He tossed the drink back, swallowing it without visible reaction. "How about a round," he said to the bartender, gesturing to the group in the back. He had already identified his three most likely interview subjects out of the ten gathered there, and now he set about narrowing down the field even further.

He waved the bartender away from the tray of drinks, floating it himself to the table, barely pausing to tip a few drops of veritaserum from the vial hidden up his sleeve into the glasses closest to him. He sent the glasses floating off the tray to their intended recipients in a seemingly random fashion; though he didn't know why he bothered with stealth, as this group of dunderheads was half drunk already. Someone pushed out a chair for him, and he joined them with his own glass raised.

His friends, and he used this term very loosely, hoisted their glasses as a unit and repeated, "The Dark Lord!" in unison before drinking up. He smirked as a majority of the men winced.

"Did you come straight from the Cup?" he asked them.

They bleated their yeses, a few eyes sliding this way and that as they did.

"Well most of us did, Rowle there had to make a stop on the way," a younger one piped up, earning scornful glares from the boorish blond and a few others. Snape pretended to ignore this statement for the moment.

"I hear it was quite the spectacle," he said.

"It was!"

"All in good fun."

"You should have seen the enormous knickers the wife was wearing."

"And where were you?" someone asked suspiciously.

"Working," he answered, "alas." The sarcasm in his voice was so slight that his statement was easily accepted with sincerity.

"It was glorious, until those fucking Ministry officials and blood traitors got involved."

"Blood traitors?" he asked, feigning curiosity.

"There were at least three Weasleys there, trying to stop us."

"I slashed one of them up good, used that sectumsempra curse."

"Weasleys," he said, eyes expressionless. "You dispose of one, and another one pops out of the womb."

They all laughed, braying like the dumb beasts they were.

"Like rats!"

"Those bloody Americans were annoying, as well."

"Bloody foreigners. If there's anything worse than a blood traitor its a blood traitor from the bloody US."

"Rowle won himself an American wand, though," the young one piped up, earning more glares.

"Did he now?" Snape asked, eyebrows rising as he looked at Rowle; as if he were impressed.

"It's a piece of shit," Rowle said, kicking his young friend under the table. "Don't even work."

"I've heard American wands are of inferior quality," Snape said silkily, resisting the temptation to mock his grammar. "Let's have a look at it, then."

Rowle reluctantly pulled the wand – roughly 11 inches, spiral pattern, golden honey color – from his robes. He'd seen that wand many times, riding on Callimachus' slender hip.

"How did you take it?" he asked, face white and still. Now was definitely not the time to recall the way it bounced as she ran up the central staircase.

"Son of a bitch jumped on me just as I was apparating," Rowle growled. "Scrawny little wanker. Stabbed me in the neck,." He pointed to a line of puncture wounds that looked to Snape like fingernail gouges. Yes, there was still at least one nail lodged in the side of his fat neck. His throat and hands looked red and blistered, as well. "I had to apparate to an empty moor to take care of him."

"Fascinating." Snape was growing impatient. "How did you take it from 'him'," he said, lip curling on the last syllable, as he probed into Rowle's thick head. He caught a glimpse of tanned, tattooed arm illuminated by firelight. That couldn't be right. Callimachus didn't have a squid tattoo. Squid. He thought of the way her face lit up when she saw the giant squid. _Idiot girl._ He did another sweep, this time seeing a wrathful brown eye.

"I crucioed him," Rowle said, eyes shifting subtly. He was not being entirely truthful. Snape saw Rowle tip and fall, heard him scream in a most unmanly fashion as flames licked over his cloak. The Death Eaters at the table laughed out loud.

"Then he body-bound him!" one of the blabbermouths shouted. "Left him petrified. It'll be ages before anyone finds the body." He cackled like a chicken.

Snape maintained his mask as he swept Rowle's mind a third time, looking for the location of the moor in question. Callimachus was extremely lucky that this imbecile hadn't the brain or ability to use avada kedavra.

Now, if she wanted her wand back, Callimachus would just have to lie in that moor for a little while longer. He bought another round, and let one of his companions order another. No one suspected that he was silently evaescoing his drinks as he lifted each one to his lips. He feigned a slight tipsiness, playing the pensive, introspective drunk. He smirked at the cleverness of his performance.

Rowle's soft mind needed just a small nudge to leave her wand out on the table, and now it was passed around, each wizard having a go with it and getting no response. Snape picked it up last. The wand heated immediately within his hand. He remained collected even as holding it became painful.

_Placido_, he commanded silently, sliding it into his cloak where it remained hot but did not burn.

"Hey, that's mine." Rowle protested.

Snape lowered his voice, leaning in close to Rowle while the rest of his drinking companions were distracted with a hushed discussion of the Dark Mark. He would have to come back to that topic later. "What use do you have for a wand that doesn't work? Especially when, if you're caught with it, you will very likely end up in Azkaban."

Rowle's brow creased in bewilderment. "Then what do you want with it?"

"I know a collector who will gladly pay for it," he whispered, forcing Rowle to lean in even closer. And now he bore down firmly on Rowle's mind, overpowering him without him even realizing it. "He's practically a recluse, and will only deal with those he trusts. I'll deliver the wand to him, and tell him that you're coming to collect the payment. You can go tomorrow afternoon to collect, minus a small fee for myself for bringing it to him, of course."

Rowle gazed dumbly at him with glazed eyes. "Where's this fellow live?"

Snape recited the address that Dumbledore had given him several weeks ago, with the expectation that he would show up with a potion as peace offering. He'd done no such thing. This opportunity, however, was one that he couldn't resist.

"Ask for Romulus. Tell him that you're the wizard who despoiled his reckless American friend, and you've come for your reward. Say it exactly like that, or he'll deny knowing what you're talking about and slam the door in your face. You will not remember this conversation."

This was the closest thing to an olive branch that Lupin was ever going to get from him. If he didn't know how to take full advantage of it, well then, that would be his own damn fault.

Rowle was just stupid enough to swallow this story, and after remaining for a few minutes longer so as to make his departure not appear suspicious, Snape strolled out with her wand still nestled in his robes next to his own. He'd learned one bit of information that night that was of actual interest to him: someone had cast the Dark Mark, but no one knew _who_. He considered the possibilities as he walked swiftly back through the Leaky Cauldron, fading into the London night and apparating to a deserted moor many miles to the north.

* * *

Clio didn't know how long she'd been laying on the ground, willing herself to move, before she finally felt her fingers begin to twitch. She'd started with her neck, concentrating on turning her head to the side so that she could stop breathing in dirt.

Her head and neck were killing her. She'd slept on a lumpy futon mattress at Henry's for several weeks and on a saggy camp bed for the past few days, but laying awkwardly on the ground as she was now was definitely the worst. Once she'd been able to turn her head, she'd started on her shoulders and arms. Now her fingers were working again, and she managed to roll herself over and pull herself up into a sitting position. She rubbed feeling back into her legs as she willed her toes to move. Her head throbbed in time to her heartbeat.

The sky was growing pale in the east, and she desperately wanted a drink to moisten her dry throat. She got her toes wiggling, wincing at the pain in her swollen, purple knee every time it flexed. She wished Sara were here: she'd heal it in a second.

She slowly hoisted herself upright, shifting her weight gingerly from one tingling leg to the other. She took one hesitant step forward, then another, walking off the numbness. Aside from the pain in her head and leg, her entire body was stiff from laying on the ground for most of the night. Her left side throbbed and burned. That must be from where he kicked me, she told herself.

She scanned the lightening sky, trying to get her bearings. The moor stretched out around her in each direction, but to the south she spotted lights from a distant city twinkling along the horizon. She headed, slowly, toward them. It was going to be a long walk, unless she happened upon a road where she could catch the Knightbus.

If only I'd held tighter to my wand, she thought. She'd had plenty of time, while laying on the ground, to rethink her actions, and mentally kicked herself now for not apparating back to the campground with him right away, during that time when she'd been racking her brain for a spell.

Now she had no wand. Tears sprung to her eyes, and she swept them angrily away with her arm. She was lucky to be alive. If she met him again she wouldn't make the same mistakes.

She caught a faint rustle in the grass ahead that couldn't have been the wind, and ducked into an especially tall clump to her right.

* * *

Snape walked deliberately through the moor. He was sure he had found the right area, but the grass was tall enough that if he wasn't careful he'd walk right past her. What he could really use, he reflected ruefully, was her wretched dog.

He thought about what he might say when he saw her, his lip curling as he recalled her parting words at the end of term. _Perhaps you'd prefer if I minded my own business and simply kept on walking, Callimachus_, he thought. _No? Would you like me to unbind you? Only if you say 'please.' Oh that's right, you're unable to speak at the moment. I think I rather prefer you quiet like this. I could simply throw you over my shoulder and carry you back to Hogwarts like a sack of potatoes. Alas, the Headmaster has insisted that I be _civil.

What would she say when he returned her wand? Would she thank him and take back every insult she'd dished out the previous year, or was she more likely to call him a foul name and stalk off?

The grass rustled several yards off, recapturing his attention.

"Snape." croaked a dusty voice. He turned to the sound, just as she stood up from the clump of grass that she'd ducked behind when she'd heard him approaching from a distance. He looked completely out of place here in his black robes, she thought. He looked like he couldn't belong anywhere other than a castle.

His eyes flickered over her from head to toe. She was more brown than he remembered, except for her left knee, which was swollen and sported several shades of red. Her dark hair had been cropped short, and she was dressed in a loose gray shirt, red shorts and sneakers. Her cheeks looked a bit hollow and her compact body held sharper edges, but Rowle was still a dunderhead for missing the small yet unmistakably feminine shapes beneath her shirt.

"Either Dumbledore sent you, or you're here to finish me off," she said huskily. Her dirt-streaked face remained wary, her eyes dead and glazed. She held her right arm behind her back.

"You're flattering yourself," he said, "if you believe I would ever waste my precious time on you without direct orders from the Headmaster."

Her eyes flashed; she was amused.

"What's that behind your back?" he asked silkily, eyes glittering.

"This? It's a rock," she said nonchalantly, bringing her right arm forward to reveal the fist-sized stone in her hand.

He smirked. "Thought you might bash me in the head with it?"

"No," she said, "I was thinking I'd throw it at your rather prominent adam's apple. I don't have much range, but my aim is fair."

"You really think a rock has any chance against my wand?" he scoffed.

"You haven't drawn your wand, yet," she said.

"I'd heard you'd been body-bound," he said with a scowl.

"The reports of my binding have been greatly exaggerated," she rasped, searching his black eyes for a hint of motive, and finding nothing. Staring into them was like falling into a bottomless pit.

"I've got your wand," he said, a slight trace of taunting in his voice. He reached into his robes, watching her grip tighten around the rock, her arm draw back. She had quick reflexes. It was possible that the stone could reach his throat before he could draw his own wand and curse her.

"How did you get hold of it?" she said, the tendons in her arm going taut.

"I took it from the Death Eater who took it from you," he said, taunting still. "You could have saved me the trouble by picking up a stone last night. Or by not having the arrogance to try and play hero."

"Yes, you're right," she said. "I'm an idiot, and by all rights should be dead now."

"Say that like you mean it," he snapped. "You're very lucky. This is the first and last time I will _ever_ risk myself for you."

"Understood," she murmured, her voice suddenly and uncharacteristically contrite.

He didn't take his eyes off of hers as he slowly withdrew her wand from where he'd kept it tucked safe within his robes. A warm surge of energy passed through it as he held it out to her.

She lowered her right arm as she reached out with her left to take the wand, letting the rock thud to the ground as the exchange was made. The tattooed squid tentacles on her left arm waved at him.

"Thank you," she whispered, taking it gently and inspecting it for damage. "I owe you one." A single tear tracked through the dirt on her cheek. She swept it away with an irritated swipe of her free arm.

"I am only here on the Headmaster's orders. You owe him," he replied icily.

"Of course." Her eyes flashed again. "You didn't get the tub of shit's name by any chance, did you?"

He eyed her critically for a moment. "Thorfinn Rowle, and no, he won't know anything about your grandfather. He's only a few years older than you. Luckily, he believes he was attacked by an American boy. He won't come looking for you."

"Lucky," she murmured, her fingers fluttering over the black ring on her right hand. "How'd you know where to look for me?" she asked.

He stared blankly as he answered, "Rowle is a consummate braggart in addition to an idiot."

She nodded, wincing as she momentarily shifted too much weight onto her bruised knee and quickly off again. Unconsciously, her hand moved to the area on her side where she'd been kicked, hiking up her shirt to inspect it. That bruise was deep red and suspiciously boot-shaped.

His eyes flicked over the ugly mark, thinking that the swelling would peak within 72 hours as the color shifted from purple to blue. "There's a simple spell to fix that," he murmured.

She nodded again, grip tightening on her wand. "Sara can do it. I need to get back to my friends, to let them know that I'm not dead."

He started to turn away, then turned back. "You're very lucky that Rowle is so dim-witted and easily manipulated, otherwise you'd have been walking for a very long time." He paused dramatically. "If you were capable of walking at all."

Her fingers spun the ring around her finger. "I know," she said. "I suppose I'll see you at school." She disappeared with a sharp crack. He stared at the spot where she'd stood for a moment before disappearing as well.

She reappeared sitting on top of their tent, which Wyatt had just rolled up.

"Hey everybody," she said. "What'd I miss?"

* * *

There was a heavy, unfamiliar knock on Remus Lupin's door a little after noon. Frowning, he set down that day's _Daily Prophet. _Sirius, who'd just sat down at the gnawed-and-clawed coffee table with a plate of bangers and mash and a bottle of beer, exchanged a look with his friend and then carried his lunch into the bathroom.

Remus put an eye to the peephole, and (not recognizing the large blond man on the other side) decided to pretend he was not at home.

The man knocked again, then yelled in frustration, "Romulus! Open up."

Curious, Remus opened the door a tiny crack. The man's blue eyes looked glazed and he smelled strongly of absinthe, vomit and Madam Caldera's Burn Salve. "Please state your business here," Remus said shortly.

"I'm here to see Romulus," the stranger said slowly. "I want my reward!"

"Your reward?" Remus said, closing the door. "Romulus doesn't live here anymore," he said loudly, rolling his eyes at Padfoot, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen on all fours.

"Wait!" The stranger butted his head against the door in frustration. "I soiled your reckless American friend! I want my reward for soiling-"

He didn't get a chance to finish, as the door flew open and he was hit with a red streak of light. He fell forward into the tiny basement flat, his feet dragged clear of the door by the enormous black dog.

Thick cords sprung up around his ankles and wrists, and a moist dish rag was stuffed into his mouth. Remus' face had gone pale and rigid, and his jaw twitched. His visitor unconscious on the floor, he crossed to the fireplace in two strides and grabbed a handful of floo powder.

The flames flared up and he threw the powder in, his head following immediately after. "Dumbledore!" he cried, unable to keep his voice from shaking.

Dumbledore had had a hunch that he would have a visitor that afternoon, and was waiting by the fire when Remus' face appeared there.

He cleared his throat. "Hello, Remus. What can I do for you?"

"Where's Clio?" His voice broke on her name. "Have you heard from her since the riot last night?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, I have. Right now she's resting in her room."

Remus released some of the air that had been trapped in his chest, "Has she … is she all right?"

"Yes, she's fine. I believe she's just catching up on missed sleep."

"What happened?"

"You should ask her that yourself," Dumbledore said gently. "I know she'd like to hear from you."

Remus looked away, mouth trembling, and nodded. "There's a Death Eater here. I think he may have been imperiused."

"Ah, so you've met Mr. Rowle. Severus mentioned that he might pay you a visit. While you have him there, I wonder if you could find out who organized last night's festivities?"

Remus frowned at the mention of Snape, but nodded anyway, already anticipating the methods he might use to get Rowle to talk.

"Remus," Dumbledore said, breaking into his dark thoughts. "If you're going to be acting on Professor Callimachus' behalf, then please consider whether she'd approve of your actions."

"Of course," he said, sighing heavily.

"Do you have anything you'd like me to pass on to her, for you?"

Remus stared down into the coals. "Tell her Elphias enjoyed her company."

"That's all?" Dumbledore prodded.

He sighed, "She should keep her eye out for a shaggy black dog."

Dumbledore's eyebrows lifted. "He's coming here? Is that wise?"

Remus heard his friend growling low in his throat from where stood guard over the stunned Death Eater. "He's worried about Harry; whether it's wise or not, he's made up his mind."

"And so have you, I take it?"

He nodded, looking down into the coals once more. "It's better this way, for her."

Now it was Dumbledore's turn to sigh. "Well, I'm not going to argue right now. Best not keep your guest waiting." Before Remus' head had faded from the fireplace he added, "Oh, Remus, one more thing. You'll probably want to relocate, as well."

Remus emerged from the fire and took a moment to compose himself before turning back to Rowle. His anger returned upon seeing the burly Death Eater. He drew his wand.

"Rennervate," he muttered. Rowle began to stir.

Remus ripped the rag out of his mouth.

"Who sent you here?" Remus asked, his voice uncharacteristically steely.

"I don't … no one. I just … I had to come here, to see Romulus for my-"

The rag shot back into his mouth, stuffing itself into his throat. "Yes, we've established _why_ you're here," Remus said. He must have been imperiused. Obviously Snape's work.

He ripped out the rag again. Rowle coughed and gasped for air. "Who else was involved with the riots last night?"

Rowle spluttered at him. "I don't have to tell you shit!"

Remus brandished his wand (tempted to crucio him until he broke down) then hit him with a stinging hex, instead.

"You'll answer my questions, or my friend here will have his way with you. And he doesn't share my restraint," Remus said, gesturing to Sirius, who stalked up now, growling menacingly, saliva dripping from his bared fangs.

Rowle began talking. With a few more stinging hexes, and Sirius' teeth snapping barely an inch from his nose, Remus got the names of the organizers.

"It was Malfoy's idea! Lucius Malfoy planned everything."

"Who cast the Dark Mark?"

"I don't know," he said, lower lip trembling. "We all split, they had us surrounded."

"Who had you surrounded?"

"The Ministry! Those fucking Weasleys. Fucking little prick jumped on my back. I fucked him up good. He'll rot on that moor before anyone finds him."

"Who?" Remus imagined Percy or Ronald lying hurt and abandoned.

"I don't know! Some scrawny American. Fought like a girl."

Rowle shook under the force of another stinging hex. His face, neck hands and arms were now layered in welts and blisters.

Remus tucked his wand into his belt and stuffed the rag back into Rowle's mouth before he let his anger get away from him. Why had Severus sent him here; was this intended as a favor or torture?

"I think I've gotten everything of use out of him that there is to get," he said. Rowle's saucer-sized eyes jumped from him to Padfoot as Remus continued to talk to the dog.

"Hauling him before the Ministry to charge him with assault would be pointless, don't you think?" Even if the testimony of a werewolf were taken seriously, Clio's identity could be exposed, putting her in further danger, he thought. Padfoot stared up at him with his measureless eyes. Remus nodded at him as he rolled up his sleeves.

"Yes, I agree that fists might be more appropriate in this instance." He didn't think Clio would object to him whaling the tar out of this reprobate.

He waited until after dark to dump Rowle (red and blistered, bound and gagged, and stripped down to his underwear) in the urine-soaked alley behind a row of muggle dive bars.

He apparated back "home," where Sirius had already begun packing. Not that there was much to pack. His possessions all fit in a single trunk, and Sirius owned even less. The furniture he had salvaged from various back alleys and dumpsters could stay behind, to be used or thrown out by whoever inhabited the basement flat next, depending on their level of desperation. The coffee table already had to be propped up by bricks on one side, from when he'd bitten through the legs during the last full moon.

His anger had burned out by now, replaced with regret for letting his emotions get away from him in the first place. Rowle had picked the absolute worst time of the month to knock on his door, just two days before the next full moon.

Heavily cloaked despite the summer warmth, they apparated first to Mundungus Fletcher's, where Buckbeak had been hidden in the garage. The hippogriff was ornery from being kept cooped up, so they had to bow for an extended period of time before he let them come near. Sirius offered him a few sausages to placate him before jumping astride his back and taking off into the night with a whoop. Both were glad for the temporary freedom, no doubt.

Remus watched them disappear from view with deep longing. He felt lonely already, and was tempted to apparate straight to Hogsmeade to beg Clio's forgiveness. Instead he walked across town, where a temporary home between homes, complete with a safe room to lock himself in, awaited.


	5. Where Do You Run?

Clio returned to Hogwarts feeling more or less none the worse for wear. She'd arrived back at the campsite fully expecting Jenn to jinx her with a unibrow or three-foot fingernails for her stupidity, but after a light scolding there had been hugs all around.

"That's what you get for telling me to fuck off!" Bernie said angrily, wagging his finger and swinging his hips in imitation of Jenn before laughing and delivering a gentler than usual noogie.

Sara had set her bruises right, marveling over how lucky she'd been. "The bruising could have been much worse," she said, drawing the swelling from Clio's knee with a poultice that smelled like a mixture of green tea and garlic.

She didn't bother to tell her grandmother about her adventures when she stopped at the cottage to bathe and pick up Nox, explaining away her filthiness and strange odor with a story about an impromptu game of quodpot. Of course, that day's _Prophet_ was already spread over the kitchen table when she arrived. Gran's pinched expression showed that she didn't believe her, but she said nothing.

Clio thought she might be able to sneak into the castle and up to her room undetected. Unfortunately, Poppy was on high alert.

"Stop right there young lady!" she yelled, pouncing on her as soon as she entered. "Let me get a look at you. She pulled her wand and a magnifying glass from a plain black bag and began a head-to-toe inspection, clucking her tongue as she prodded Clio's arms and legs and peered closely at her eyes, checking for spell damage.

"How's your head feeling?"

"Fine."

"Professor Snape said you should have your head examined, and I'm inclined to agree," she said.

"I'm fine, really."

The healer ignored her, shining her lighted wand into her ears, nose and mouth.

"How has your appetite been lately?"

"I'm fine! Really fine, there's nothing wrong with me," Clio insisted.

"You look a bit thin."

"That's because I haven't been stuffing my face with chocolate," Clio muttered, anxious to get away.

"Clio! There you are!" Charity flew at her down the corridor, hugging her and rescuing her from Poppy's scrutiny with her tears. "Minerva and I were up all night in Dumbledore's office. We didn't leave until Snape reported back that he'd found you!"

Poppy, satisfied that Clio wasn't about to fall over, packed up her instruments and left to consult with Pomona about the current bubtubor crop. "Hopefully there's some ready to squeeze, I could use the stress relief today," she said as she walked out.

"What happened?" Charity asked, as soon as they were alone in the corridor.

"What did Snape say?" Clio asked, imagining that he'd fabricated some story about singled-handedly fighting off a dozen Death Eaters in order to rescue her.

"Hardly anything. He found your wand in an alley and then went to return it and you threatened him with a rock."

Clio scoffed. "I didn't threaten him. Well, maybe I did. It made sense at the time."

"You don't have to convince me, I'll take your word for it." Charity hugged her again, then sighed. "Now I've got to try and compose a letter to Derrick that will explain about you-know-who."

"Easy: just say he's the wizard equivalent of Hitler. Or Emperor Palpatine. Or the Master."

"Hitler. Right, got it," she said.

When Clio passed McGonagall a minute later she appeared slightly less stoic than usual, nodding snappily and saying, "Dumbledore would like to see you. Glad to see you're in one piece," before continuing on to her office.

Clio trudged slowly up the stairs, had there always been this many steps, or had they increased exponentially over the summer? She desperately desired to fall into bed, but stopped in Dumbledore's office on the way to brief him on what she'd witnessed at the Cup. Mercifully, he didn't inquire about exactly what had happened after she'd leapt on to Rowle. Not-so-mercifully, he was interested in hearing about her personal life.

"I trust you had a … productive summer?" he asked, bright blue eyes taking in even the most subtle of changes in her demeanor.

"Yes," she answered, more or less truthfully. It had been an interesting summer, to say the least.

"And your family is well?" he asked.

"As well as they can be," she replied flatly.

After leaving Alexandria, she had visited her parents just long enough to establish that her father was settling into his new job; remembering to set the alarm clock, for instance, and then remembering to deposit his pay check when it arrived. Even after nearly twenty years in the muggle world he was capable of forgetting simple things like that. Satisfied that her parents were going to be okay, she'd moved on to her sister's.

Calliope had eyed her recently shaved head with silent concern while her niece and nephew had looked impressed, which caused her sister more concern. She'd ended up spilling everything about Remus that night after the kids went to bed, this time over just one bottle of wine and with no vomiting the next day.

"And your school friends?" he asked her.

"All hanging in there," she said with a shrug. "Have you ever been to Maxwell Street, Dumbledore?"

He chuckled. "I haven't. I suspect it's a remarkable place if even half of the stories I've heard are true."

Clio nodded. She had never experienced another wizard market like it. "You could quite possibly buy anything there." Henry had already made a name for himself in the community, and his shop was doing better than it had under its previous owner. He'd hung an assortment of instruments in the front window, and set his workspace up in the front so passers-by could watch him lovingly constructing and stringing the lyres and guitars. Henry's voice alone, floating out the open door and windows as he worked, was enough to draw clients in. A new recording space filled the back. He lived in the small apartment above, where Clio and a rotating array of out-of-town musicians who'd come to purchase custom guitars, lutes, lyres, mandolins, banjos and ukuleles had all crashed in the living room.

"I'd heard it might be shut down," Dumbledore added, eyes twinkling.

"It very nearly was. The city wanted it; eminent domain and blah blah blah. The local council just ended up moving it to the space between buildings on the corner of Maxwell and Halsted. You access it from a Polish sausage stand. Just ask for a hot dog with ketchup."

His shaggy eyebrows shot up. "What if someone really does want a hot dog with ketchup?"

She shook her head. "You don't put ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago, it's practically a law!"

In addition to helping Henry renovate the space, decorating the walls and securing it with runes, Clio had worked feverishly to construct a few dozen music boxes to give away to the musicians who tried out his studio. Once the shop had opened, she'd spent her time practicing her guitar and photographing the musicians that passed through.

It was the Thursday of Clio's third week at the shop when The Istari had shown up. She barely recalled seeing them in Edinburgh the previous November, and only remembered that she'd thought them not worth remembering. That changed as soon as she heard them tinkering with new material in the studio. She'd fallen in love with them, then. Not with them, exactly, but with their music. She'd taken the guitarist up on his offer of a lesson, and spent the better part of a day with him in the studio while his band mates were out enjoying a quodpot match. She thought he was just that dedicated to his music, which he was, until one thing led to another...

She'd felt guilty then, had cried, and ended up telling him how she'd gotten her guitar. She'd thought maybe he wouldn't want to have anything to do with her after that, and so was surprised when he invited her to join them in the studio the next day to record back up vocals for a couple of their songs. She'd accepted and then struggled through several awkward hours of paranoia over every look, gesture and aside from Henry and the band.

"Is that the giant squid on your arm?" Dumbledore asked, gesturing to the two long tentacles creeping out from under the sleeve of her shirt.

"Yes, one of my friends did it," she said, eyes swimming back into focus. She hesitated for just a moment before rolling up her sleeve to show him the entire thing. "If you look closely, there are runes mixed into it's body, they change according to the situation and time of day."

"Wyatt's running out of real estate, and your shoulder is begging for a tattoo," Jenn had said, abruptly interrupting Clio's mournful monolog over breakfast on the first full day she'd spent with her and Wyatt and Hannah in Boston.

Clio had drawn a rough sketch right there at the kitchen table, and Jenn had inked in the entire thing later that day, saying, "Now you'll have something else to talk about when we meet Bernie's new girlfriend for dinner tomorrow."

They'd headed to New York the next day to meet up with Bernie and Krista, and Sara and Emily had come up from Washington. The tattoo had gotten her through drinks and appetizers at Bernie's favorite Italian restaurant, but she'd ended up blathering on about Remus over a plate of eggplant parmigiana while being serenaded by cheesy saxophone. She made it through dinner without tears, though she'd cried later that night while pretending to sleep on Wyatt and Jenn's couch.

"What did your grandmother have to say about it?"

"Oh, she doesn't even know it exists, yet."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Long journey, from Boston to Galloway."

She shrugged. Crossing the Atlantic through a combination of apparition and flying was not for the fainthearted. She'd arrived at her grandmother's cottage starving and exhausted, and took a day to recover before setting to work.

"I trust it was worth your while?" he continued.

"Oh, well, Galloway is lovely this time of year," she said.

She'd had just two weeks before her friends arrived for the Quidditch World Cup, and intended to learn as much about her grandfather's work at the Ministry during that time as possible. She hadn't found out much. Perhaps anticipating her nosiness, her grandmother had locked the cabinet where her grandfather's papers were stored with some combination of spells she couldn't break. Getting into the Ministry had been easier, although twice she'd been caught snooping around the Department of Mysteries and booted out.

She had been able to familiarize herself with the basic layout of the department, and had even managed to sneak into the space room. One unmarked room, tucked out of the way, securely locked and apparently deserted each day she'd passed by, had moved up the list (ahead of death and just behind time) of those to explore.

She'd identified a few of the department employees, but had not been able to get close enough to any of them to ask questions. One, she was sure of this, had looked at her, startled, as if he'd seen a ghost. She made a mental note when someone else shouted, "Bode!" and he turned his head. A few hours of research in the Ministry library (the librarian there watching her in a very Pince-like manner the entire time) had turned up a Broderick Bode who had started working in the department during her grandfather's tenure there. Perhaps she could write him a letter. And that was all she'd turned up. She'd learned almost as much from Doge at the World Cup. Croaker and Bode: two names for her to contact.

Her research into Snape had proved slightly more fruitful. She wasn't sure exactly why she did it. Maybe she hoped to find something she could hold over his head – not black mail exactly, but revenge for outing Remus. Maybe she also wanted to know why Dumbledore trusted him.

First she'd confirmed her suspicions that he was a half-blood, then she'd tracked down the address of the house where he'd grown up. She might have left it at that, if her efforts to track down Remus' whereabouts hadn't come to a dead end.

"Well," Dumbledore said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Your tattoo seems to think that it's time for a nap, and not more idle chit chat."

"Yeah, I am a bit tired," she said, coming back to the present and glancing at the runes on the squid's body, which had rearranged themselves to spell out "sleepytime." Dumbledore gazed at her with his twinkling blue eyes. How much of what she left unsaid had Dumbledore guessed on his own?

Clio woke up feeling well rested the next morning and shuffled into her bathroom to get cleaned up for the day. That's when she discovered the withered brown leaves.

"Noooo!" she wailed. Every last one of the plants in her bathroom had died. Pomona had given her some special end-of-the-year instructions to see them through the summer, and apparently she'd forgotten all of them. She felt stupid for crying over plants, but cry she did as she bathed.

After dressing, she rolled all the dead vines into a ball, shrunk them down to a size that would fit in her pocket, then carried them out to the compost pile and tossed them in. Nox got the wrong idea and returned them to her, so they ended up playing fetch with the vine ball until Nox got bored and shook it to shreds. Now all that was left of the living wall was a tray of dirt and an empty wooden frame. It was a bit of a relief to not have to worry about killing the plants anymore, now that they had died. She had a blank slate, and though she was unsure of what to do with it, felt that adding new plants would be a terrible idea.

She needed to think, and so traipsed down to the dungeon to the photo lab. She was greeted in the corridor just outside by several stacks of boxes, all the photo supplies she'd ordered for the new school year.

Snape's door was shut and no light crept out; he was either out or still asleep. She glanced at her watch; it was nearly noon, so he would have no right to complain about her playing music.

She unlocked the lab and moved every last box inside with a few waves of her wand. She listened to Black Magic while putting everything away and brewing developing potions. She was singing along when a shadow fell through the open door.

"Ah, Callimachus, it's only you. I thought that someone might be torturing a house elf," Snape purred. Water dripped from the ends of his cloak, leaving a puddle on the floor; apparently it was raining.

"How can you not like funk?" she asked, incredulous. "How's it feel to have no soul?"

He stared coldly at her for a moment, and (as always) it was impossible for her to know just what was going on behind those black eyes.

"Anyway, I hope you haven't forgotten the little bet we made. I've got hours and hours of new music to introduce to you."

"Dumbledore has called a staff meeting for two o'clock this afternoon," he said, turning and sweeping off down the corridor. "Don't be late."

"Thanks," she said, and had turned back to her potion before realizing that she'd been saying "thank you" to him far too much lately. At what point would the scales tip far enough in his favor that she'd have to forgive him? MUCH farther, she thought.

The meeting in the staffroom that afternoon proved to be unexpectedly emotional. Clio glanced around at all of the now-familiar faces, marveling at how last year's meeting seemed as if it had happened just yesterday and simultaneously a lifetime ago. Flitwick nodded and smiled, Hagrid gripped her in a scratchy bear hug, Pomona squeezed her in one of her warm, squishy hugs, and even Aurora hugged her in a polite, ladylike way.

"A'most didn' recognize yeh with short hair!" Hagrid exclaimed, ruffling the top of her head.

"Have you lost weight?" Pomona asked, looking her up and down after a second squeeze.

"Maybe a little bit," Clio said, looking down at herself. She had noticed lately that her pants felt a little loose, but actually had no idea how much she weighed. "I just haven't been able to stuff my face over the summer like I do here," she said.

"Let's get this meeting underway," Dumbledore said then, rescuing her before her dead plants could come up in conversation. "You've no doubt all heard about the riot at the Quidditch World Cup," he continued, "some of you were actually there." He looked at Charity as he said this, and Clio watched with interest as most of the eyes in the room went to her friend. Of everyone there, McGonagall met her eyes for a moment before looking sharply away. And Snape, of course; she felt his black gaze press down on her for a moment, as well.

"While these events were unfortunate, they will not prevent Hogwarts from hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament this year." A collective gasp went up from the staff. Clio noted that none of the heads of houses expressed surprise. Instead, McGonagall's temple had begun throbbing, and her lips were pressed tight. Snape scowled. Flitwick tutted to himself, and Pomona shook her head.

"What's the Tri-Wizard Tournament?" Clio whispered to Charity.

"It's a competition. I'll explain later," she whispered back.

"I understand everyone's concern," Dumbledore continued. "The timing of the Ministry's request to revive the tournament is … intriguing to say the least. Extra precautions will be taken of course, to ensure the students' safety. Only students who have come of age will be allowed to participate, and Barty Crouch himself will be serving as a judge."

There were a few murmurs around the room despite his reassurances.

"Also, my good friend Alastor Moody will be arriving later this week to take over Defense Against the Dark Arts classes," Dumbledore added.

Clio looked down at the floor. Hold it together, she thought, gritting her teeth. When she looked up again, she caught Snape's eyes darting away, his mouth still pulled into scowl.

"Out of all Aurors in recent memoy, there's never been anyone better at sniffing out Death Eaters than Moody," Dumbledore said.

"He also makes Trelawney look well-adjusted," Charity whispered to Clio.

"It took some begging on my part to get him to accept the position, so please make him feel welcome. He's agreed to one year, only. He's a bit paranoid and decided to nip the curse rumors in the bud."

Interesting, Clio thought, adding Moody to her mental list of people to talk to.  
Dumbledore went on, "Our guests from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive in October. We've obviously got a lot of work to do before they arrive, to reinforce our security measures. Mr. Filch, Professor Callimachus, you know what that means." Clio looked over to where Filch stood, grumbling, by Madam Pince's side. She nodded to him, and he nodded back.

"Once they do arrive, I'll be counting on all of you to enforce our safety rules. We don't want any of our guests to attempt to climb the whomping willow or go walking in the forest and wander into the giant spiders' territory, for instance."

"Ol' Aragog is peaceful!" Hagrid insisted loudly.

Dumbledore laughed, "Yes, you're quite right Hagrid, but he does have a great many hungry children."

"How many extra students will we have this year?" Poppy asked, looking like she was already thinking of the injuries she'd soon be treating and wishing she had a ripe bubotubor to squeeze.

"That will depend on how many the headmaster of Durmstrang and headmistress of Beauxbatons bring with them. They'll only be bringing sixth and seventh years, and only the ones who wish to put their names in for the tournament, so it shouldn't be too many for us to handle."

"I'll need to stock extra birth control, as well," Poppy muttered under her breath.

"Off you go now, we've all got work to do," Dumbledore said, shooing them all out of the staffroom with a wave of his hands.

Pomona, Charity and Aurora collectively cornered Clio before she could escape; perhaps they had noticed her looking at the floor when Dumbledore mentioned Defense Against the Dark Darks.

"Clio, it's too rainy to enjoy the lake, but how about we come up for tea, and I can help prune and fertilize your plants. I'm sure they'll need it after your summer away."

"I'll bring the tea things," Aurora said hopefully.

"Oh, that's nice of you, but … the plants are all sort of … dead," Clio said, rubbing at the sudden ache in her side.

"Oh," Pomona said, her face falling slack.

"I'm really sorry, I must have forgotten to do all the end of school year things I was supposed to. I did warn you that I'm bad with plants," she said sheepishly.

"Oh, don't worry about it," Pomona said. "Your mind must have just been occupied with other things, you know how busy things get at the end of the school year, with exams, and everything," she babbled, dancing around the what they all knew had been the real distraction.

"Well, maybe we can take a look at what's left, and help you redecorate," Charity suggested.

"I've been thinking of putting up photographs," Clio said.

"That's probably safer than more plants," Pomona said, suddenly unable to suppress a giggle.

Clio cracked a quarter of a smile. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too."

It rained the next day as well, but Clio didn't mind so much since she had to spent it indoors, anyway, laying security runes with Filch. She'd have thought that she would be able to find all of the secret entrances herself by then, but the castle had an odd habit of shifting itself around. Not just in obvious ways, like the staircases, but in subtle ways, as well. She swore that the corridor that led to the photo lab, for instance, used to be slightly wider than it was now, and took one less turn. The view from her bedroom seemed slightly different, too. Now she saw a little less lake and a little more of the grounds.

The rain continued all week, keeping her out of the lake and in the lab, developing her rolls and rolls of film from the summer. She scanned through her pictures of Santorini and Maxwell Street, debating which ones to print in large scale for her bathroom. She placed an additional supply order for canvas sheets, thinking that she may as well teach the photo club how to make large-scale prints while she was at it.

She listened to new music exclusively as she worked; the old stuff was laden with too many memories. She mostly played Black Magic and sometimes Monsters and Muggles, waiting for Snape to bang on her door just to tell her just how awful they were. She found herself falling in to comfortable patterns. She walked into Hogsmeade with Charity one night for a drink, and down to Hagrid's cabin the next afternoon for tea and rock-hard biscuits. He showed off the blast-end skrewts he'd bred over the summer and, as much as she detested killing, she was fleetingly tempted to burn the lot of them after catching a glimpse of the blood suckers protruding from their bellies.

* * *

Remus hated being a burden. It didn't matter how many times the Podmores protested; after riding out his transformation in their cellar he was anxious to leave.

"You just got here! You know you're welcome to stay as long as you like," Sturgis said, raking one hand through his heavy blond hair and tilting his bottle of butter beer to his mouth with the other.

"I know, although I'm sure your cats will be glad to see me go," Remus answered lightly. He picked idly at the label of his own bottle, avoiding the wide-eyed stares of the two young Podmore children, both square-jawed like their father, seated across from him at the dining room table. Sturgis' wife, Maeve, plunked the roast down a little harder than was strictly necessary.

"Oh they're fine, they'll come down from the attic as soon as I crack open a can of sardines," she said, pouring herself another glass of wine and sitting down at the end of the table opposite her husband. The corners of her mouth turned up, but the fine lines at the corners of her eyes remained fixed. His mind was made up.

"Looks delicious," he said, faking a smile of his own at the over-cooked meat.

"See, you'll be missing family dinners like this," Sturgis exclaimed, carving up the roast as enthusiastically as he'd downed his butter beer. His son and daughter continued to stare, no doubt trying to reconcile the unearthly howls that had woken them in the middle of the night with the gray, tired man picking at his food before them now.

"Dumbledore also thought it might be advantageous for me to move closer to Hogwarts," he said. It wasn't a lie, exactly. He was sure that Dumbledore actually would like it if he moved closer to the school, he'd just never said so.

"Where are you off to next, Aberdeen, did you say?" Maeve asked, deftly cutting a slice of roast into bite-sized pieces for her daughter.

"Edinburgh, actually," he corrected her, softly.

Edinburgh. Saying it out loud was like ripping a fresh scab off of a wound. Last year's mistakes surged in his mind. That night in the club had been the beginning of the end. If he'd controlled himself then they could have remained just-friends, and friends they would remain. He'd hated to see her disappointed, though, and had been foolish enough to think he could be better than he was. He'd avoided Edinburgh as long as he could since leaving Hogwarts. The city was, however, home to the one place where he would feel less alone, less of an outcast and (most of all) slightly less useless than everywhere else.

"Stay tonight, at least. Leave tomorrow if you must. Right now you look as though a stiff breeze could blow you over."

He smiled weakly, thinking that he felt that way, as well. "All right."

* * *

The weather for the first day of school fit the very definition of dark and stormy. Professor Moody didn't arrive on the train with the students, and had yet to arrive when the feast began. Clio found herself seated by Charity at the staff table once again. She paid little attention to the sorting ceremony, instead concentrating on sitting very still. The vice-like grip that had struck her left side just before entering the great hall made her think of Rowle's heavy boot, but now there was a new pain pulsating just under her ribs on the right. She supposed it might be from all the hours she'd spent inhaling developing potions after being away from them over summer.

Dinner was already through (Clio managed a half-hearted chuckle when Charity offered her spotted dick for dessert) and Dumbledore had just broken to the students that there would be no quidditch that year when the doors to the great hall burst open to admit what she could only classify as a close cousin of the _Frankenstein_ monster. His face was a mess of mangled meat, out of which stared a gigantic glowing blue eye. He walked with a heavy staff, as well as a claw-footed false leg. The entire hall fell silent and followed his progress up to the staff table. This could only be Moody, Clio thought, as he clunked his way up to the one empty seat, taking a long pull from a hip flask as he sat down. Seemingly oblivious to the watching crowd, and even to Dumbledore's warm introduction, Moody began jabbing and devouring the sausages on the plate nearest him.

The oppressive silence that followed in his wake lasted until Dumbledore announced the Triwizard Tournament, and Fred Weasley broke it with one perfectly placed exclamation.

Clio exchanged a look with Charity as the blonde burst out laughing. Clio might have joined in, if breathing in too deeply didn't hurt so much. She had resolved to say something to Poppy about it once they'd all assembled in the staffroom, when the pain abruptly began to recede. Suddenly aware that she was hungry, she helped herself to a thick slice of pumpkin bread.

The atmosphere in staffroom that evening was more subdued than usual. Clio listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall and the uncomfortable shifting of feet as the teachers congregated in small clusters, all observed by Moody's roving eye.

"That thing really creeps me out," Charity whispered to Clio.

"Me too," she replied.

She glanced about her, watching Moody clunk around the room, not touching the wine that had been opened, but drinking liberally from his flask. Clio nursed her wine, wanting to make it last. She didn't fancy a repeat of last year, when she'd started the term with a massive hangover.

"Look at him look at Snape," she said to Charity, then. Moody stalked by the low arm chair where Snape sulked with his wine, eye swiveling to watch him even after his body had passed by. Snape seemed as discomfited by his magical eye as she was, because he made a point of avoiding Moody's gaze, directing his glower at the opposite wall, instead.

"Of course he hates him," Charity whispered. "He's an ex-Auror; he's probably thinking he'd like to toss Snape in to Azkaban."

Clio felt a chill run down her spine as the magical eye rolled around to examine her. If she sometimes felt naked under Snape's scrutiny, then she felt transparent under Moody's. It was as if he could look right through her skin to see her heart beating like mad against her ribs. His eye moved on.

"Let me refill that," Charity said to Clio, as she drained her wine glass.

"No, I'm fine."

"You're stopping at one?" Charity's eyebrows rose up practically to her hairline.

"Yeah, that's all I want."

"Yeah right," she scoffed.

"What do you mean?" Clio asked.

"I've never seen you turn down a drink."

"Well, I am now."

Charity tried to laugh it off. "There's no harm in being a lush. Just don't end up like Trelawney."

"I'm not a lush." Clio glanced around the room to where Professor Trelawney was inhaling sherry as if it were oxygen. "From now on, only one drink for me."

"Oh come on, you'll never stick to that. What about birthdays? New Year's?"

Clio shook her head. "Special occasions excepted, but even then I will not drink so much as to have a hangover the next day."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Charity said, oozing skepticism.

"Fine. Watch me," Clio was getting irked, now.

"So, doesn't this qualify as a special occasion?" Charity asked, refilling her own glass and tipping the bottle toward her.

"Nope."

Charity pouted.

Hagrid approached tipsily, warming up his voice with a salty sea chanty.

"Drunken singalong! How can we have drunken singalong while sober?" Charity wailed.

"I sing a lot better when I'm sober. I'll play whatever you guys want," Clio said, setting her glass down and retrieving her guitar from the corner where'd she'd stashed it. The beech wood glowed mellow gold in the soft fire and lamp light. The strings rippled under her hands, tuning themselves as she fit her wand into the notch in the neck. She sighed. She was doomed to remembering that Snape had retrieved her wand every time she played.

"What'll it be? A bawdy ballad? A folk hero ballad?" She strummed a few idle chords while they debated, her eyes wandering about the room and settling on Snape sulking in his chair. A wicked thought came into her head, and before Hagrid and Charity could settle on a tune she launched into "Red Haired Mary," an Irish pub song that everyone and their mother knew by heart. Half the room was soon singing along, drunk or not. Snape glowered at the wall, though whether he'd picked up on the significance of her song choice was a mystery.

Her two partners having settled their dispute, they segued straight into the ballad of a vengeful witch who enchants a river to keep her son from crossing over to rescue his pregnant lover from a wandering rogue. Things didn't end well for the son, his lover, the rogue or the queen; but tragic stories always made for the most compelling songs.

They followed that song with a ballad about a hapless sailor who's pursued by death across the seven seas before finally sailing into the Southern Pacific and disappearing from the earth. Clio loved sea songs the best. By now, Hagrid was starting to lean rather precariously to the right, and Charity kept busting into Pearl Jam lyrics.

"Anyone have a request?" Clio asked jokingly. Unexpectedly, McGonagall took her at her word.

"It's been ages since anyone's played 'The Two Magicians,'" she said. "I don't suppose you would know it?" she continued, her eyes looking rather far away.

Clio nodded. The Scottish ballad about shape-shifting lovers was one passed down to her from her grandmother. The usually stern assistant headmistress was singing along, misty-eyed, by the end. Clio was so startled by her reaction that she immediately launched into the silliest song she could think of. There weren't many in her repertoire; she and her guitar seemed to prefer sad songs of late. It was a little blues ditty about a failed fishing expedition, and by the time she'd drawled, "Fish ain't bitin' no more," for the third time McGonagall's eyes had recovered their flinty reserve.

It was close to midnight by then. Filch and Pince had already snuck away, and with a yawn Dumbledore suggested that they all head off to bed. She thought she felt Moody's electric blue eye burning into her back as she mounted the stairs toward her room.


	6. Wolf Life Me

The rain passed through over night, leaving behind heavy wet clouds and puddles all over the school grounds. Nox skirted around them during her early morning walk, glancing up frequently at Clio with folded ears; as if wet paws were a great indignity.

"You won't melt, Nox," Clio said with a sigh, wondering how she'd ended up with such a fussy dog as she tramped through the water in her boots.

She suffered first-class jitters all through breakfast, though they weren't nearly as bad as the previous year. This year she had an idea of what she was doing: she'd done it all before. The runes she'd put on the door to her classroom had kept Peeves out over the summer, and so the room had gone untouched. She inhaled deeply and (satisfied that the room no longer smelled of dung bomb) left the windows closed to keep out the damp chill.

Unfortunately, her class of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw fourth-years was more interested in talking about the Triwizard Tournament than listening to her outline of the class schedule. Equally curious and irritated, she set down her syllabus.

"Okay, since it's all you can talk about today, I'll award five house points to the first person who can explain exactly what the Triwizard Tournament is in fifty words or less."

They looked at her, incredulous, for a moment before all bursting out at once.

A dark, quiet boy whose sulky expressions and slightly creepy demeanor reminded Clio of a young version of Snape raised his hand from the back of the room.

"Yes, Mr. Corner?" she asked.

"Don't they have something similar in North America?"

She frowned. "No, not really."

He raised his hand again.

One corner of Clio's mouth twitched. "You don't have to keep raising your hand, we can carry on a conversation, here," she said. His hand dropped immediately.

"I thought there was something with two schools?"

"Yes, there's the Cross-Country Contest. That's a team competition."

"Where's the other school at?" asked Susan Bones. Clio suddenly had her students' attention again.

"Gila Canyon, in New Mexico," she said, then continued talking in an effort to stem the tide of questions. "It's basically a big capture-the-flag tournament. Both schools send a team to a secret location that changes each year. "

"Did you do it?"

She sighed. "Yes."

"Did you win?"

"We've gotten very far off the topic of runes," she said, picking up her syllabus again. Her action was met by a chorus of groans. She attempted to eye them sternly over the paper, but felt the corner of her mouth twitching again and knew that she was failing miserably.

"We got our asses kicked," she said, shaking her head at the chorus of guffaws that followed her admission.

"How come?"

"Weren't you any good?"

She sighed again. "Well, our team wasn't very good at working together. There were too many little splinter groups within it and they didn't all get along." She thought of the Enoch Bananas purposely getting themselves eliminated so they could heckle everyone else from the sidelines, of the Ravens Claws trying to strategize on their own and winding up all being eliminated within the first hour, of the contingents from Order of the Badger and Quill and Scroll getting lost and wandering out of bounds during the second hour and of the Jolly Rogers attacking the Mugbloods halfway through and getting both groups eliminated. The representatives of the other houses had tried to pick up the slack, only to be gradually picked apart by the united front of the Gila Canyon team.

The members of The Istari had all attended Gila Canyon. Alex, the guitarist, had been a part of that team and had mocked her endlessly about it over the summer, though not in a mean way. This was the first time she'd even thought of him since leaving Chicago-

"Ancient Runes! We're here to study runes, people," she said, clapping her hands to drown out the collective groan from her class.

McGonagall was spitting mad about something when Clio entered the great hall for lunch, while Charity couldn't stop laughing.

"What did Trelawney do now?" Clio asked, watching McGonagall's temple throb as she furiously chewed her minced meat pie.

"Nothing, today. Moody transfigured Malfoy into a ferret!" Charity said, wiping tears from her eyes.

"At least someone's finally disciplining the little wanker," Clio said, glancing down the table at him and instantly regretting this after catching a glimpse of him polishing his eye. "I wish I'd been there to get a picture of it,"she added.

She didn't see Malfoy in class herself until later in the week. He stalked sullenly into the room, then sneered at Hermione Granger as the girl walked past him to her seat. Clio stared at him openly until he had taken his own seat.

"Welcome back, everybody," she said, once everyone had settled in. The general excitement over the tournament had died down just enough by then that she was able stick to her original lesson plan.

"Let's see how much you've retained over the summer," she said.

The Gryffindors and Slytherins all grumbled as she distributed copies of a pop quiz with a flick of her wand.

She laughed at them. "Don't worry, this will count as extra credit, only. This test is partially to tell me how good of a job _I_ did last year." She regretted that announcement later, as she looked over the completed quizzes and saw that half of the Slytherins, including Malfoy, had filled in the wrong answers for every single question.

"Little turd," she muttered.

She spent that afternoon teaching the photography club how to produce double exposures. There were several new members among the crowd including the Weasleys' friend Lee Jordan, whose round cheeks grew endearing dimples whenever he smiled (which was nearly always), and a pale, spacey girl named Luna Lovegood who she'd met earlier that week in runes class. Clio couldn't help staring at her wide silvery gray eyes, which were very close to Remus' in color if not in expression.

"Have you ever photographed Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?" Luna asked.

"Umm, no, I can't say that I have," Clio replied. The girl's unblinking eyes were mesmerizing, like a will-o'-the-wisp on a dark night.

"They are very elusive. My father and I have been searching for them for years."

"Oh, well, if you find some you'll have to show me what they look like." Clio broke her gaze, and noticed several of the other students smirking. Some swirled their fingers about their ears when Luna's back was turned. She tried to shoot them a serious look to make them stop, but gave up and simply turned her back on them when that didn't work.

The last students had left for dinner, and she was just about to close up the lab when she heard angry voices in the corridor just outside. She slid the door open just a crack to peer out. Moody and Snape were standing in front of Snape's office door.

"The Headmaster authorized you to search _my_ office?" Snape sneered, his eyes inadvertently locking on hers in their desperate attempt to avoid Moody's. Clio ducked her head back into the lab, but kept the door cracked so she could continue to listen.

"Not just yours, I'm authorized to search any room I like," Moody growled in response.

"He is also free to enter any room in the castle whenever he likes, which I'm sure you already know. Why wouldn't he just search it himself if he were concerned?"

"Because he's busy and knows there's things that I'll pick up that he might miss!" Moody roared. Clio thought of his magical eye. She was carefully, carefully shutting herself back inside the lab, willing the door not to make a sound, when Moody called out unexpectedly.

"Good evening, Professor Callimachus."

She considered closing the door anyway, then changed her mind and stepped out, as if she had just now opened the door, instead of having been standing there and listening in to their conversation.

"Hey," she mumbled, turning casually to lock the door behind her. She heard Moody's staff clunk heavily on the floor as he ambled toward her.

"Not so fast, Callimachus," he said. She stopped and turned slowly back toward him. "That lab butts up against the potionmaster's office, doesn't it?" Clio didn't respond. She had no doubt that he already knew this.

"Wouldn't you like to know if there were a secret passage between rooms?"

Clio's eyes widened. She looked over Moody's shoulder at Snape's train tunnel eyes.

"I assure you that there is not," he said icily.

"There'd better not," she said.

"Still, there might have been something in that shipment of photography supplies that doesn't belong," Moody said, enormous blue eye boring into her soul. "Someone might have slipped something into one of the boxes while they were sitting out in the corridor."

"Impossible," she said, "I unpacked the boxes myself. I'm not sure what you're looking for, but _I _would have noticed if there was anything that didn't belong." This wasn't the type of reception she'd expected from a friend of Dumbledore's. She'd been expecting someone a little more along the lines of Elphias Doge.

Moody sized her up for a moment. "If you're that confident then you won't mind me taking a peek inside."

Clio was about to protest based on the Fourth Amendment before remembering that this wasn't the U.S., and he wasn't a police officer. Her hands clenched into fists at her side. He continued to stare at her, while she avoided his gaze.

"Be my guest," she said at last, with an irritated wave of her hand, her other hand clenching her wand at her hip. She swung the door wide and stood in the corridor as he clumped forward, meeting Snape's blank gaze for moment behind the other wizard's back. Snape followed her into the lab, which Moody was rummaging through without having to even open the cabinet doors. He lifted his staff and prodded the walls.

"This wall is very thin compared to the others," he said at one point, tapping the stones in the wall above the sink vigorously.

"I'm told the two rooms were once one large storeroom," Snape droned.

Clio's mouth quirked briefly upward. That must be the section of wall where the sound from her music box passed through into his office. She would have to make certain to station it there from now on.

Moody paused to take a swig from his flask and grunted. "This would be the perfect place to hide a secret doorway from one room to the next, ehh Severus?" Clio's eyes popped open again.

"What interest could I possibly have in sneaking through the wall?" Snape answered softly.

"Even if someone were to sneak past my security runes, I would have been alerted by the caterwaul charm I've placed on it, as well," Clio said, more than a little disturbed by the idea of Snape slipping through the wall at night.

Moody slapped the counter with one hand, "Very well then, Callimachus, sorry to trouble you. No one will ever say that I let a stone go unturned, however.

His eyes swept over the cabinets again as he turned to leave. "You've got some interesting photographs stashed away in here," he said, gesturing to one particular locked cabinet in the corner. Clio's eyes narrowed.

"Those are private," she said quietly. That was the cabinet where she'd locked away all of her pictures of Remus, not wanting to see them anymore, but also not having the heart to throw them away, either.

"I haven't seen Lupin in years, but I received a very detailed letter just before I left home, outlining everything he covered last year."

Clio's eyes dropped to the floor. She could feel the weight of both Snape and Moody's gazes on her, and wanted to scream at both of them to leave.

"Fascinating," said Snape in his iciest tone. "Now, if you're satisfied that I've not hidden anything in here, then I believe that dinner has already begun." He swept out of the room, Moody clunking after him. Moody paused by the door and turned to Clio once more.

"Giant squid? Interesting," he said, gesturing to her arm. Clio immediately crossed her arms over her chest. He'd looked through two layers of clothing to see that tattoo. "Has Snape shown you his?" he added then, cackling wheezily as he stumped out and down the corridor.

Clio glanced back at the thin spot in the wall. The very idea of Snape walking through the wall was preposterous. Moody was obviously paranoid, and overly suspicious of Snape's past. He must not know everything that Dumbledore did, or everything that _she_ did, either. She turned her back on the wall and then, skin breaking out in goosebumps, immediately turned back. The wall was just as she'd left it. Still, what if there were a one-way control on his side of the wall? The hairs on the back of her neck began to bristle.

She walked as slowly as possible up to the great hall, not wanting to catch up to either one of them. Snape caught her later that night, while she was adding an extra layer of protective runes to the walls inside the photo lab. He stood just outside the open doorway for a moment, staring at her.

"Yes?" she asked, only after the awkward silence had become unbearable.

"There's no secret door," he scoffed. "You're wasting your time."

Clio, finished with her spell, turned to blink back at him innocently. "How do you know I'm not adding a sound-proofing charm?"

His lip curled, "You have a terrible poker face."

"Great, next time I go to Atlantic City to run the tables I'll invite you along," she said, returning her wand to her belt. "Why do you think Moody would be looking for a door in the first place?"

Snape scowled. "He's paranoid. He didn't find anything in my office, so perhaps he thought I might be hiding something somewhere else."

Clio's mouth twitched. "What would you be hiding, your official Voldemort Fan Club membership card?"

His black eyes glinted dangerously. "You shouldn't throw that name around so carelessly," he spat. "Your parents did you a great disservice in not raising you to respect the Dark Lord's power," he continued as he slunk out.

"And your parents did a bang up job of raising you," she muttered towards his back. She wasn't sure whether he even heard her or not, though his head may have tilted slightly as he glided away.

* * *

Dented bells clanged out of tune as Remus entered the dimly lit shop and inhaled deeply, taking in the scents of paper, dust, leather and mildew; the collective smell of thousands of old books. It was a safe, homey fragrance. Red late afternoon sunlight illuminated the dust motes floating in the air, their lazy drifting the only activity within the entire space. Remus knew appearances could be deceptive, however. He walked stealthily down the nearest aisle, a path carved between teetering columns of books. He felt a shift in the air before he heard or saw the proprietor make his entrance, a bent old man in paisley-print robes. His disheveled white hair circled his head like a bird's nest.

Boldof MacLeod blinked at him with milky blue eyes surrounded by deep folds.

"Can I help you, sir?" he rasped.

Remus approached slowly, watching a glint of recognition spark in the man's eyes as he stepped into his limited field of vision. The pouchy creases around his mouth shifted, and it was hard to tell whether he smiled or frowned.

"Hello Boldof. Is there a bed available?" Remus asked.

"For you, there is," MacLeod responded, tiredly. "I'll expect you to do some work about the place," he continued, acknowledging the chaotic pantheon to books that surrounded them with a stiff wave of his arm. "Not that that's ever been a problem for you," he added, already turning and shuffling off down a pathway that had appeared between the rows and rows of books.

"How has business been?" Remus asked, following closely behind the old man, ready to catch him should he stumble.

"Ehh," he shrugged. "It's brisk and slow, it comes and goes."

Remus nodded, though the old man had already turned away and couldn't see the acknowledgement.

"Dinner's in thirty minutes, you're welcome to join us."

"Oh, no, I don't want to impose. A bed is all I need."

Boldolf stopped and turned, pinning Remus with his cloudy gaze "You need to eat, don't you? Have you eaten today?"

Remus looked away, pretending to be interested in a copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's _Gadding with Ghouls_ that had been marked down by 75 percent.

"That's what I thought. Dinner's in thirty. I can guarantee you Raoul and Ulric will be there, stuffing their faces."

He brought Remus to what appeared at first glance to be a random bookshelf along one wall, but when he pulled out a first edition of Alexandre Dumas' _Le Meneur de Loups_ (seven volumes in on the left side of the second shelf from the top) the entire bookcase rotated with a creak, revealing a narrow stairway that led up.

"Thank you," Remus said, stooping to enter the stairwell. "As always, I'm eternally grateful and forever in your debt."

Boldolf shrugged again, scratching at his hair as he shuffled off, "I thought I'd seen the last of you. It's a shame you're back."

"Yes," Remus sighed, plodding up the stairs to the long narrow room under the rafters, filled with books just like every other room in the shop; walls insulated with books to keep out the chill. Cots took up the middle of the room. They folded neatly into squares during the day, becoming all-purpose reading, research and working stations for the transient artists, writers and werewolves that Bodolf took in.

Toward the back of the room, in the shadows, stood an iron cage large enough to accommodate several adult males. Keeping together during the full moon eased the transition. They might stage aggressive displays, but having others to act out on resulted in fewer self-inflicted injuries.

There was a separate cage for women in the basement. Caging the men and women together would only … complicate matters. To make up for the lack of natural light, the females' quarters stayed cooler in summer and less drafty in winter.

Raoul was already stretched out on his cot, snoring away. Ulric sat near the west window, gazing glassy-eyed at a dog-eared copy of _Buns & Brooms_. The amply-tushed witch on the cover looked over her shoulder and winked at Remus, giving her cheeks a jiggle.

Remus cleared his throat, and Ulric looked up. He was several years younger than Remus, but his hair had gone considerably more gray. The change tended to fall harder on werewolves who'd been infected later in life. Ulric had been bitten at age 18, and his hair had begun graying the next month. The young man's amber eyes widened.

"Loony Lupin!"

Raoul snorted himself awake at his friend's outburst and sat up. His grizzled hair had once been as red as the Weasleys'. He grunted at Remus, glanced at his watch, and seeing that dinner was still 25 minutes off, flopped back down and returned to sleep. He looked ten years older than his 40 years, and although he'd never been to wizard school (and had only attended four years of muggle school) Remus had tutored him to the OWL level in history of magic, charms and defense during their spare time.

"Ulric, good to see you're striving to improve your mind," Remus said mildly.

"Don't worry, you can have it when I'm done," Ulric answered with a grin.

"No, thank you," Remus responded, claiming the last cot for himself and unfolding it. He may as well try to relax before dinner. He'd hardly slept during the past two nights.

"That's right, you probably still have memories to work off of."

"I have no idea or interest in whatever it is you're referring to," Remus said, sliding his shoes off and stretching himself out on his side, cradling his head on one arm and covering it with the other. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing that Ulric would keep his mouth shut for once.

"You know who I'm talking about, that girl we spotted you with last year in Underworld." Ulric looked up, eyes glinting devilishly. "She wasn't a student, was she? Is that why you took her so far from Hogwarts?"

Remus gritted his teeth and said nothing, knowing that whatever he said would only encourage Ulric further. If he kept quiet he'd eventually grow bored and go back to his magazine.

"Is that why you're back here now, you got caught shagging a student? Did you bend her over your desk or-"

"Ulric! Shut the fuck up. I'm trying to sleep, here," Raoul snapped. Ulric stopped, but the grin plastered on his face gave away that he was seconds from another taunt. "We all know you're just jealous of Remus for being capable getting a job," he growled.

Ulric laughed, but his grin faltered. "That's just- you don't know anything, old man." His reddened face disappeared behind the tattered magazine.

"You'll be lucky to live to my age, with that mouth," Raoul continued. "I'll snap your neck one of these nights in the cage."

Silence fell. Remus exhaled, and as he began to doze imagined her husky voice whispering in his ear, "S'agpo."

He was abruptly awoken 15 minutes later by Ulric jumping on him and putting him in a head lock. Remus sighed as he drew his wand and muttered, "Stupefy," under his breath. His attacker slid off of his cot and fell to the floor with a thud. Remus sat up and rubbed his eyes, then slipped his shoes back on and stood up. Raoul was already up and standing by the door. Remus started forward, then hesitated and turned back. Ulric lay prone on the floor, mouth frozen open in a grimace, drool starting to slide from one corner of his mouth.

"Just leave him," Raoul said, "He'll unfreeze in a minute. That'll give me a chance to introduce you to Ylva before dinner is spoiled."

"Ylva?" Remus repeated, catching the way Raoul's voice lifted as he said her name. He followed Raoul down the stairs and around a corner toward the kitchen, both drawn by soft yellow light, cheerful feminine voices and the tantalizing scent of lightly seared beef.

The cozy kitchen was dominated by a wooden table that looked like it had survived several centuries of active duty and illuminated by candlelight. Bodolf sat hunched at one end, flanked on his left side by a radiant young woman of seventeen or eighteen who Remus realized with a bit of shock must be his granddaughter, Maggie. Her blonde curls floated about her head like a halo, her blue-green eyes scrunching shut as she laughed at something the woman at the opposite end, who must be Ylva, had just said. Ylva looked to be about his age, though her dark, sad eyes looked decades older. Her full, wavy hair was jet black but for a silvery white streak down one side. She hadn't been a werewolf long.

All conversation ceased as Maggie jumped up from the table with a squeal and ran to grasp him in a hug that reminded him uncomfortably that she was no longer a little girl.

"Hello, Maggie, classes not begun at Beauxbatons, yet?"

"I'm all done with school!" she said, nose scrunching as she laughed again. "Ylva, this is Remus, the one I was telling you about," she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up to the table, where the older woman sat, smiling shyly, hands folded on the table before her. Raoul had already sat next to her, one of his hands reaching for hers.

Remus breathed a tiny sigh of relief when she turned her smile toward Raoul.

* * *

Clio didn't speak to Moody again until a few days later. She was standing in the courtyard just after sunrise, waiting for Nox to finish her morning pee, when she heard Moody's unmistakable clomping gait.

She was determined to try to talk to him, as difficult as that might be, so she took a deep breath and turned to face him as he stumped up.

"Good morning," she said.

"Morning," Moody grunted back. "We got off on the wrong foot the other day," he said, tapping his fake leg with his cane and attempting to smile, which only made his mangled face look even more horrific. Clio eyed him warily, but a hint of genuine amusement crept hesitantly onto her face.

"I'd like to remedy that," he added. When she said nothing, he continued. "Make a fresh start. I'm Alastor Moody," he said, sticking out a hand.

She released a minute amount of the tension from her shoulders, just enough to allow her to extend her hand in turn. "Clio Callimachus," she murmured. His grip was firm, trustworthy. He nodded to Nox, who had circled over to sniff his claw foot.

"Nice dog," he said.

"Thanks. Found her scavenging in an alley."

He grunted again. "Your father was John Callimachus? Beater for the Magpies?"

"Yeah, he still is. John Callimachus, that is. Not still a beater."

"Right," he said, taking a swig from his flask. Clio wondered what he was drinking so early in the morning.

"You might have heard of my grandfather as well," she said, clearing her throat. "Ambrose Callimachus."

He started at her blankly for a second. "Refresh my memory?"

"He worked for the Ministry, up until '75. I know it's large, but you might have run into him. He looked a lot like me, only taller. And male."

"I'm afraid us aurors didn't mix with the bureaucrats pushing quills at headquarters too much. Always out in the field we were. Constant vigilance!" He gestured to his electric blue eye.

"I guess not," Clio said, deflated. "He wasn't a bureaucrat, though, he was a scholar with the Department of Mysteries. I thought you might have heard-"

"Department of Mysteries, did you say?" Moody suddenly looked more engaged in their conversation. "Oh yes, yes," he said. "I do remember hearing about Callimachus, now..."

He trailed off and in her excitement she pounced. "Were you involved with the investigation? I know no one was ever charged, but I've always wondered what evidence had been turned up."

He laughed bitterly, then scratched at his chin. "No, and I'm afraid anyone who wasn't working directly on a particular case would be kept in the dark. The Ministry has been very stingy about sharing evidence. I can assure you that if they'd found anything remotely interesting there would have been arrests. People were put on trial with the flimsiest of evidence back then, it was a kind of mania. No one was given the benefit of the doubt. Guilty until proven innocent was the motto."

He spat into the bushes, then took another swig from his flask.

"Course, Snape still got off," he growled. "All because Albus Dumbledore stepped in."

Clio nodded mutely, trying to hide her disappointment. Another question had been buzzing about the periphery of her mind, and she closed her eyes now as she forced it out into the open.

"So, you got a letter From Lupin," she said, attempting to project detachment. Moody stared at her until she, squirming under his scrutiny, continued. "Did he mention what he's up to these days?"

"Nope. He was all business," he answered, scratching thoughtfully at his chin again, his eyes never leaving her face. "He did mention to keep an eye out for you."

"Me?" Her eyes flew wide.

Moody grunted. "Thought Snape might retaliate."

"Oh," she murmured. "I don't think there's any real worry there."

"No? Are you sure about that?" He laughed harshly. "I heard about his escapades after the World Cup."

"Escapades?" She tried not to appear intrigued by what he might say about Snape, even though she was dying to know. "When he retrieved my wand."

"Retrieved, yes. Who knows exactly what he did to get it back," Moody said. "What kind of bargain he struck."

"Would he really bargain with Death Eaters?"

Moody laughed again, then turned dead serious as he responded, "He can try, but he can't deny what he is." He took another swig. "Of course, I hate to refer to those goons at the World Cup as 'Death Eaters.' They aren't in the same league as the LeStranges or Dolohov, or even Crouch."

"No, I guess not. Lucky for me," she said, left hand going unconsciously to her side.

"Did you see it?" he asked, his natural eye burning intensely.

"See what?" she asked.

"The Dark Mark. Did you see it light up the sky?"

"I did," she answered, goosebumps rising on her arms at the memory.

"So, you saw how they reacted?"

"They all fled," she replied.

"That's right," he responded. "Imposters, all."

Clio was left at a loss for words.

"But, you were asking about the Department of Mysteries. I've gone way off topic," he said with another harsh laugh.

She nodded.

"Trying to do some amateur sleuthing, ehh?" he asked, exposing his uneven teeth in another terrifying smile that puckered the scars criss-crossing his face.

She shrugged. "Just curious. I would have liked to know my grandfather better, but seeing as I'm unable." She shrugged again. "I've found a couple of names. Bode and Croaker. Ever heard of them?"

"Hmm, oh yes, yes. Croaker and Bode. Both very well respected," he said.

"I thought I might write to them," she said. "Ask them what they might be able to tell me. You don't think that would get them in trouble, would it?"

"What? Getting a letter in the mail?"

"I guess that does sound silly," she said sheepishly.

"Just a warning, before you go turning over too many rocks, consider whether you really want to know what's underneath."

"What do you mean?" she asked, already composing a letter in her head.

"There may be all kinds of unpleasant truths for you to uncover. After all, you said yourself you never really got to know your grandfather. Just be prepared. If you're going to go turning over rocks, then don't be surprised when you find all kinds of nasty, slimy things crawling around underneath."

Clio shivered involuntarily, her blood freezing in her veins.

He took a last swig from his flask before stumping back inside, nodding and grunting his farewell as he went.


	7. The Double Agent

Clio was unable to dwell on her own misery so long as she had classes to keep her mind occupied. It was primarily on the weekends, when she had long uninterrupted blocks of free time, that she fell into melancholy. She spent one whole weekend composing draft after draft of the letter that she eventually sent out to both Croaker and Bode. It was her seventh and final draft that she copied and had delivered by owl, wishing the birds good luck as she sent them off, hoping that she had gotten the wording right.

_Dear Sir,_

_My name is Clio Callimachus. We've never met, but perhaps you knew my grandfather, Ambrose Callimachus. He would have worked for the Ministry in your early days there. As you most likely already know, he was killed in 1975, when I was just four years old. I'm attempting to learn as much as I can about him, solely to appease my curiosity about the man to whom I owe so much, but was sadly robbed of before I could even express how much he meant to me. If you are agreeable to a meeting, then I would move heavens and earth to link up with you at a location and time of your choosing. If you have any question as to the verity of my identity or intentions, then I urge you to contact Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at your earliest convenience for a reference. I anxiously await your reply._

_Sincerely,_

_Clio Callimachus_

As she watched the owls shrink to dots in the dusky sky, she thought that perhaps throwing Dumbledore's name out might have been a bit much, but it was too late now. Now she woul djust have to wait and see.

With the letters sent, she had to find other ways to save herself from drinking alone and listening to all of the music that made her sad. She forced herself to head outside, taking long walks with Nox. The music followed along in her head, unfortunately, providing a sorrowful soundtrack where ever she went.

Per Dumbledore's advice, she kept an eye open for strange dogs whenever she was out and about, whether she was roaming the school grounds with Nox, or walking in to Hogsmeade with Charity for a drink. She gazed longingly at the forest from time to time, remembering her walks with Remus and the afternoon that they'd spent searching for rune woods; the afternoon when she'd become aware that he was tumbling as helplessly for her as she already had for him.

On one such wistful walk, she spied Hagrid near the pumpkin patch, toting a bucket of what looked like dead birds. He looked very stressed, and didn't stop to say hello.

"Hey," she called, running to catch up, Nox bounding along beside her. "What's all that?" she asked, nose wrinkling at the stench of blood.

"Oh, hi. Jus' a little feed for the thestrals," he said. "I been so busy with the screwts I barely have time to check on the other animals," he added.

"Oh, why don't I help?" she asked, swallowing the bile that rose up in her throat.

Hagrid smiled, "Sure. Yeh seen thestrals before?"

"Yeah," she answered softly, "I've seen them."

He nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I been seein' 'em for a long time."

"Me too, as long as I can remember," she said, recalling a long black carriage that drew itself up to an ancient grey stone church. The building had seemed impossibly large and immovable, and sat the time she'd thought that that must be where God lived. She'd exited the church on her father's shoulders after refusing to walk up to the casket to say goodbye, crying and complaining that her legs were tired. It was only after the casket had floated into the back of the carriage ahead of them that she'd noticed the cadaverous creatures that drew it. This memory was so old that she couldn't be sure that it had actually happened; as far as she knew it had always lived with her.

Hagrid's shoulders sagged for a moment, apparently he was reliving his first thestral siting as well, then lifted again unexpectedly. "Wait till yeh see Tenebrus, he's a beaut'! Clever, too."

Fang looked up at him with droopy, forlorn eyes. He seemed to know what the bucket of birds meant, and wanted no part in the outing.

"Ruddy coward," Hagrid chided him, then chuckled. Nox stayed behind as well, and the two dogs watched them out of sight before chasing off after a squirrel.

Clio followed Hagrid into the densest part of forest, forcing her mind back to the present as they picked their way between ancient, gnarled tree roots. Ravens watched them from the twisted branches, tousled feathers bulging from their throats as they called back and forth. Presently, they reached a quiet clearing that even the ravens avoided. Clio no longer had to force her mind to concentrate on her surroundings.

The thestrals congregated here, and they took her breath away. Tenebrus was easy to pick out with his regal bearing and satiny skin, blacker than Nox. Improbably skeletal and yet the embodiment of strength, he towered over even Hagrid. He turned fluidly as soon as Hagrid lifted his bucket and cantered toward them, the rest of the herd following close behind. Hagrid tossed out the poor dead birds one by one, making sure everyone got a fair share.

"Here," he said, "go ahead, throw one out! They won' bite. Well, that little one there might," he added with an affectionate chuckle. "Watch yer fingers with him."

Clio held her breath and turned her head as she squeamishly stuck her hand into the bucket, groping about the slimy contents until she felt her fingers close over a clawed foot. She squeezed her eyes shut, pulled it out, muttering, "Om mani padme hum," as she tossed it gingerly toward a young female, who caught the bird handily. She swallowed it in a single gulp, then walked up to rub her surprisingly smooth head against Clio's shoulder. Her skin smelled slightly of sulpher and she had sepulchral breath, but Clio had to admit that she had a very sweet personality as she stroked the smooth, bony head with one hand while wiping the bird residue off of her other hand onto her pants.

"Tha's Nebula," Hagrid said, tossing out the last of the dead birds and holding out the empty bucket for Tenebrus to lick clean with his long black tongue. "She seems to like you."

"I like her too," Clio said, breathing through her mouth and thinking that the next time she saw Hagrid on his way to feed the animals she might run violently in the opposite direction.

"Charity told me about you and Lupin!" Hagrid blurted out suddenly.

"Oh?" Ice water rushed through her veins. She looked up at him with wide eyes and saw that his face had gone bright red.

"I should have guessed, meself. I noticed you always got on so well," he added, one hand twisting around the frilly pink umbrella that he carried like a security blanket.

"Sorry I never told you. I could have," she said, twisting her own fingers through Nebula's silky black mane.

Hagrid frowned, "No, don't worry about it. I know I have a big mouth. I actually said to Lupin once that you migh' make a nice pair and he insisted that you were jus' friends. Guess he wanted to keep it quiet. That's no surprise."

"It never bothered me," she said.

"It weren't you he were worried about, it were other people. Not everyone understands, him bein' diff'rent an' all." His voice grew a bit shaky. "It's not easy for people who are … diff'rent, who're used to bein' looked down on. They don't want it to carry over to anyone else, anyone they care about."

Clio nodded, staring at the gossamer-thin skin on Nebula's wings to avoid any chance of meeting his eyes. "Anyone who looks down on you isn't worth worrying about," she murmured.

It was his turn to nod. "Yeah," he sniffed, then cleared his throat. "Well, back to the screwts. Want to help feed them? They're insatiable little buggers."

"Oh, uh, sorry Hagrid, I really have to get back to work … photo lab," she said, blurting out the first excuse that came to mind. "Maybe next time," she added as they began the trek back to the castle.

"Come out anytime," he called after her as he ambled off towards his cabin.

She did actually have some work to do in the photo lab: looking through her photographs from the summer and picking out a few favorites to add to her bathroom walls. That would certainly be enough to keep her mind occupied for a couple of hours.

Snape just happened to begin stalking up the stairs as she began trudging down them into the dungeon, his opaque eyes gleaming up at her as he rose from the darkness.

"Hey," she said as she descended, searching for something appropriate to add. "How's the weather down there?"

His eyes narrowed as he parsed her words for hidden depth, then rolled over as he determined there was none.

She sighed, wondering for the umpteenth time what he'd done to get her wand as Moody's crackpot ramblings coursed through her mind. They drew even with one another on the stairs and for a moment she was tempted to give him a shove, just a little shove, to see how he would react.

"Don't even think about it, Callimachus," he droned, continuing on up the stairs behind her. She stopped and turned.

"Think about what?" she said, affecting confusion, as she resumed her downward trajectory.

"You know perfectly well what I mean," he said, continuing on his upward path without looking around.

"No, I-" she said, then cut herself off with a sharp intake of breath as her left foot hit the last step and pain flared like lightning though her left side. She shook her head and kept going, left hand clasped to her side, pace slackening as each footstep became a small agony.

He turned then and followed her progress down the corridor with his eyes (brow furrowed and mouth pulled back in a sneer) until she'd disappeared from sight, before sweeping up the last stairs.

Once within the lab, Clio propped herself up on a chair and found that as long as she didn't move too much, she felt quite comfortable while sifting through her slides. By dinnertime she had her choices narrowed down to two dozen out of slightly more than 500. Her stomach felt somewhat better, as well, better enough that she was actually aware of her hunger.

She let Nox out once again, then led her upstairs to her room. It was on her way back down again that she caught sight of Moody, leaning heavily on his staff as he began his descent from the second floor. She quickened her pace just enough to catch up with him as he reached the last step, gritting her teeth against the increased pain this produced in her side.

"Professor Callimachus, lovely to run in to you again," Moody said without bothering to turn his head. She found it slightly disturbing that he could see her through the back of his own head. She wondered whether he could see his own brain, or whether he might just tune it out the way she tuned out the hiss of static whenever she listened to the WWN over her music box.

"Hey, Professor Moody," she said, drawing even with him even though the prospect of looking directly into his magical eye wasn't much better than facing him through the back of his skull. "How goes it?"

His eye swiveled over her for a moment. "It goes well enough, I suppose," he grumbled.

"I heard you've been teaching the unforgivables?"

"If you're here to voice your opposition to my teaching methods, then I'm simply going to tell you the very same thing I've already told Professors Sprout and McGonagall: I received permission from Dumbledore," he growled.

"Oh, no, I wasn't going to complain. I actually had a question about one of them."

"Oh," he said, "All right then. Let me guess, Avada Kedavra is it? That's the curse that always fascinates people the most. How does it work? It's a mystery." His natural eye burned intensely as he spoke.

"Actually, I wondered how much you know about the cruciatus curse?"

"Ahh, that's a wicked little spell," he said. "I certainly know more about it than most."

"I wondered ... how long can it last, after it's been applied? Do the effects ever … linger?"

His natural eye narrowed, and his magical eye whirled around, perhaps to determine whether anyone was watching. "Have you been suffering the effects of it lately?" he whispered hoarsely.

"I … I don't know. I was struck with it after the World Cup but fought it off. Now, I don't know, something's causing me pain."

"You fought it off?" he scoffed, pausing to take a swig from his flask. "It must have been improperly applied."

Clio recoiled from his words. Her own sister had taught her the technique she'd used to break it; it had worked for Calliope during the deliveries of both of her children, events which must be at least equal to the curse on the pain scale.

"Lingering effects of the cruciatus curse are primarily insanity and uncontrollable shaking," he continued, apparently unaware that he had caused offense. "You appear to suffer from neither, so it must be something else."

"Ahh," she said, deflating a bit. She'd hoped it might be the curse causing her belly pain; knowing the cause, no matter how horrible it may be, was better than not knowing.

"Unless," he added, turning toward her, his electric blue eye pinning her to the wall like a bug. "Has anyone else been around when you've experienced this pain?"

"Yeah," she said, remembering that she had passed Snape earlier that day, and had been sitting at the start of term feast the time before that.

"Someone could be casting it on you periodically, perhaps to shake you up."

"But who would do that? No one here-"

"Really? Can you think of no one?" He silenced her with is questions. "Who has been around when the pain has struck?"

"Well, multiple people," she said thinking of the feast. "Snape was there today, but..." her voice trailed off.

"Snape," he repeated. "Who else but Snape?"

"No. I don't think he would do that," she said, frowning.

"Are you sure about that?" Moody said, face cracking into a hideous grin.

Clio was still frowning when she entered the hall a minute later, deep in thought and letting her feet carry her on autopilot up to the staff table. Dumbledore had complete confidence in Snape's loyalty, didn't he? It was the hint that he'd dropped that had led her to his house, and while nothing she'd discovered provided any concrete answers, she figured that Dumbledore must have them. Had he not shared them with anyone else?

Snape was seated at the table already. His keen eyes wandered over to her vacant ones, then darted away when he saw Moody stumping along behind her. The ex-auror cackled wheezily.

Charity joined her at the table a moment later, shaking her quite literally out of her ruminations with both hands on her shoulders.

"Clio! Where have you been? I was looking for you earlier."

"Oh? Sorry, I was in the lab and before that I was out with Hagrid." She looked around to the end of the table where the giant man usually sat. His seat was still empty, which had been happening quite often lately.

"Speaking of Hagrid," Charity said as she sat down, "we may need to check on him, make sure those monsters he's breeding haven't got him trapped in his house."

Clio nodded, then reached for her water glass and took a drink before saying, "So, I was talking to Hagrid today and he mentioned Remus."

"Oh?" Charity asked, sounding innocent but looking slightly guilty.

"What did you tell him, exactly?"

Her friend took a big gulp of wine and sighed. "Hagrid was worried about you at the end of last term. He wanted to know why you were so sad, so I told him. I asked him not to tell you we'd talked, since I thought it might upset you even more. Sorry."

"No, it's okay," Clio mumbled. "He sounded sad today, himself. I think he's lonely. Like, lonely, lonely."

"He must be lonely. It's got to be hard, there aren't many like him."

Clio lowered her voice. "Is he..."

Charity did the same. "Part giant? Yeah."

"No wonder. He kept mentioning being 'different.'"

Charity nodded and sighed again. "I never thought of it like this before, but he and Remus are alike in some ways."

Clio had been about to take another sip of water, but stopped and set her glass down with a thunk.

"Are you okay?" Charity asked, her forehead creasing with worry.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Clio answered, eyes examining her empty plate. "As fine as I can be."

"Pomona and Aurora might be worried about you as well."

"I appreciate it, but there's no need for them to worry," she mumbled, scooting her chair out. "I have grading to do."

"We haven't even eaten yet."

"I'm not feeling very hungry just now."

"You're wasting away and it's driving me berserk," Charity snapped.

Clio looked up at her for a moment, registering the creases on her friend's forehead and between her eyes.

"Fine. I suppose I could eat some form of fried potatoes," Clio muttered, looking around for a dish. "I don't want your forehead to get all wrinkly on my account."

"Oh, shut up," Charity said, relaxing just a smidgen as she handed her the platter of fat, golden chips that had just appeared in front of her face. She watched the chips pile onto her friends plate and file one by one into her mouth, in addition to another full glass of water and a generous slice of custard tart.

"So, are you bringing your grading down to my room, or should I bring mine up to yours," she asked as they left the table.

"Why don't you come up, tonight," Clio said.

Sprawled out on the chairs in Clio's room later that night, their work spread around them, Monsters and Muggles singing about riding whales and slaying bears from Clio's music box, life almost felt normal.

* * *

An intense fire roared on the hearth, flames licking out from the grate and blackening the stone mantel. Peter sweated in the heat, droplets of moisture running down his smooth forehead and dripping off of the end of his narrow, pointed nose; pools of it soaking his robes around the armpits. The fire wasn't for him, but for his lordship, who couldn't tolerate even the slightest chill in his present state. Peter itched to wipe the sweat from his brow, to cast a cooling charm, to kick the logs from the fire and smother the embers, but he was currently chest deep in heavy coils of venomous snake.

He had been tasked with the fortnightly milking of Nagini's venom. She watched him now through one golden eye, her cat-like pupils narrowing and her lithe body compressing ever so slightly around his shapeless one as if she could read his thoughts. Her fangs were sunk deep into the muslin he'd stretched over the top of one of the fine brass cauldrons he'd found in the Crouches' kitchen, but her coiled muscles were possibly as deadly as her venom. He stroked the snake's glossy cheeks, massaging the glands within, forcing the venom out through her fangs into the cauldron. The crystal beakers had all been too small to accommodate her massive jaws.

He'd been at it for fifteen minutes already, and knew from experience that this torture would be over in another four. Then would come the torture of preparing the potion under the scrutiny of his master's unblinking blood-red gaze, enduring the harsh corrections and the constant reminders of his inadequacy as a potioneer.

His lordship was still alive though, and the ungrateful bastard had Peter to thank for it. The snake tightened around his soft belly just a bit more, forcing a bit of air from his mouth. He wasn't allowed to question the Dark Lord even within the private space of his own head. His watery eyes darted up to the armchair where his master lay sleeping, bundled in hand-knitted blankets from the Crouches' attic, blankets that Mrs. Crouch had painstakingly constructed for baby Bartemius.

The flames suddenly whooshed as (practically on cue, as if conjured by Peter's thoughts) a familiar disfigured face appeared in the middle of the blaze. Nagini withdrew her fangs from the cloth and unwrapped herself from around Peter, sliding over to the chair and wrapping herself around its base to protect her master. The creature (for their master could hardly be called a man) bundled up on the chair opened its eyes, suspiciously wide awake. It turned it's flat, scaly face toward the fire, then spoke in a high, cold voice that sounded much too powerful for so weak-looking a thing.

"Wormtail, where are your manners? Bring me closer to the fire so that I may speak to my _faithful_ servant." Peter, sucking in a deep lungful of air now that he could expand his chest properly, scrambled to his feet, the venom sloshing within the cauldron as he stumbled upon legs that had gone to pins and needles. "If you spill a drop of that venom, then Nagini will see that you lose permanent use of your lower half," the Dark Lord added.

Peter set the cauldron down on a sturdy side table and rushed to his master's chair.

"Yes, my Lord, forgive my clumsiness. Here we go." He dragged the chair up closer to the fire, then propped the toddler-sized monster up to sit before the face that waited patiently within the flames, eyes burning bright with a childlike fervor. Peter stood waiting by the chair, sweaty hands clutching each other nervously, waiting for the face within the fire to speak.

"Wormtail, you fool! Take that venom to the kitchen and store it properly. It will lose it's efficacy if it's left out."

"Yes, my lord," Peter said, bowing as he scrambled for the cauldron. He hefted it up against his belly for stability and scurried to the kitchen, scowling as soon as he was safely behind the door.

The Dark Lord turned to his loyal servant in the fire. "Well, what have you to report?" he asked, red eyes burning with a passion all their own.

"Everything is proceeding according to plan, master."

"And Dumbledore?"

"The old fool doesn't suspect a thing. Keeping Moody alive for questioning has turned out to be a wise decision."

"Excellent," the creature called Voldemort said, the wide slit on his reddish face that functioned as a mouth spreading into a wicked smile.

"I've a plan for getting the boy's name into the goblet as well. It will be easier than I first thought." Locked safely in his private chamber, unobservable by anyone in the castle, he let his true self begin to surface. The stringy gray hair receded from his head, shorter blonde strands taking its place. The scars splitting his face faded and disappeared, replaced by smooth freckled skin. The false eye popped out of place, replaced with a real eye flecked with a mixture of blue, brown and green.

"Careful," the Dark Lord said. "It would be most unwise to underestimate Dumbledore's ability to see what goes on within his own school."

"Of course, master," Barty Crouch said, stretching his neck out and loosening his spine. "I'm very secure in this office. It's such a relief to inhabit my own body for a while. No more arthritic, swollen joints; no more pickled, inefficient liver." Back within the confines of a darkened chamber, concealed behind a mirror hanging on the wall of the Defense Against the Dark Arts office, Crouch straightened out his leg and flexed his knee. Moody's discarded false leg rested on the floor nearby.

"You dare to complain to me about missing your own body?" The creature said in its high-pitched, deadly voice, eyes narrowing to angry slits.

"No, of course not, my lord," Crouch said, smile vanishing, eyes filling with pain at his error. "Let me tell you some of what I've learned," he continued earnestly, hoping to regain his master's favor.

"Tell me about Potter," Voldemort demanded petulantly. "How is my nemesis shaping up as a wizard?

Crouch paused briefly, not sure that it would wise to share his honest assessment of the boy, but also knowing that his master would almost certainly be able to tell if he lied.

"He's still green, my lord. An excellent flier, like his father, but so far in my presence he hasn't displayed any talent to rival your own," Crouch answered, not adding that he thought the boy was going to need more assistance to get through the tournament than either of them had first assumed.

"And yet, he has managed to elude me three times already!" Voldemort said, voice rising shrilly.

"Yes master, but he will not escape again, I assure you," Crouch replied, eyes burning fervently.

"No, he will not," Voldemort said, voice hard and shrewd. "Have you gained his trust yet?"

"Yes, master. Establishing a rapport with the boy has been easy. I am already in an excellent position to influence him"

"Very well," the dark Lord said, somewhat appeased for the moment.

"That's not all, master. There's a teacher here from a fourth school, name of Callimachus. That was the inspiration for my plan for the goblet," he said gleefully.

"Callimachus?"

"Do you recognize that name, my lord? Her grandfather worked in the Department of Mysteries, up until his murder." He laughed. "She thinks she will find his killer. In the meantime, she's proving to be a useful informant. She's already given me names of two unspeakables to interrogate, Croaker and Bode."

"Callimachus, I don't recall that name. Must not have been important enough for me to be involved. Department of Mysteries, though, that is interesting. Perhaps there is a connection there to the prophecy, hmm? Perhaps Croaker and Bode will be useful as well. Good work. Have you anything else? What of Snape?"

Crouch growled in a fashion very reminiscent of his alter ego. "Snape is a coward. He won't even look Moody in the eye."

"Can you be sure that isn't simply out of disgust? What can you tell me of his alignment?"

"Dumbledore is sure he is trustworthy. I've found nothing concrete to contradict that, so far. I don't understand why someone of your magnitude would even waste your time with the likes of him. We both know who your true followers are."

"Snape's abilities are unique. I would much prefer him to make the potion that has been keeping me alive all these months, rather than that fool," the Dark Lord said, referring to Peter, who stood (attempting to listen) on the other side of the kitchen door. "He will prove most informative, I believe, once I am returned to my full grandeur. Keep your eye on him in the meantime."

"Yes, master. Callimachus may prove a useful tool in that respect. She is young and very gullible and has her own reasons to dislike Snape."

"Very well. If it turns out that Snape's truly abandoned me then you may kill him, but only after you've gotten everything useful out of him. The girl, too. I don't like leaving loose ends behind. Perhaps you could arrange it to look like they did each other in."

Crouch's thin mouth curved into a deranged grin. "Yes, master," he said.


End file.
